# Identifiable Representation and Model Learning for Latent Dynamic Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17882 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17882/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imagination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01603/) (2019)
- [Learning Latent Dynamics for Planning from Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04551/) (2018)
- [Challenging Common Assumptions in the Unsupervised Learning of Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12359/) (2018)
- [CURL: Contrastive Unsupervised Representations for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04136/) (2020)
- [Variational Autoencoders and Nonlinear ICA: A Unifying Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04809/) (2019)
- [Learning Invariant Representations for Reinforcement Learning without Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10742/) (2020)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Unsupervised Auxiliary Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05397/) (2016)
- [DayDreamer: World Models for Physical Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14176/) (2022)
- [Data-Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Self-Predictive Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05929/) (2020)
- [Embed to Control: A Locally Linear Latent Dynamics Model for Control from Raw Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.07365/) (2015)
- [Unsupervised Feature Extraction by Time-Contrastive Learning and Nonlinear ICA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06336/) (2016)
- [Weakly-Supervised Disentanglement Without Compromises](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.02886/) (2020)
- [Contrastive Learning Inverts the Data Generating Process](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08850/) (2021)
- [DeepMDP: Learning Continuous Latent Space Models for Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02736/) (2019)
- [Disentanglement via Mechanism Sparsity Regularization: A New Principle for Nonlinear ICA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10098/) (2021)
- [Interventional Causal Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11924/) (2022)
- [Weakly supervised causal representation learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16437/) (2022)
- [CITRIS: Causal Identifiability from Temporal Intervened Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03169/) (2022)
- [Towards Nonlinear Disentanglement in Natural Data with Temporal Sparse Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10930/) (2020)
- [Nonparametric Identifiability of Causal Representations from Unknown Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00542/) (2023)
- [Learning Temporally Causal Latent Processes from General Temporal Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05428/) (2021)
- [On Disentangled Representations Learned From Correlated Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07886/) (2020)
- [Linear Causal Disentanglement via Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16467/) (2022)
- [Identifiability Guarantees for Causal Disentanglement from Soft Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06250/) (2023)
- [Hidden Markov Nonlinear ICA: Unsupervised Learning from Nonstationary Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.12107/) (2020)
- [Identifiability of deep generative models without auxiliary information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10044/) (2022)
- [Weakly Supervised Disentangled Generative Causal Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02637/) (2020)
- [Denoised MDPs: Learning World Models Better Than the World Itself](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.15477/) (2022)
- [Weakly Supervised Representation Learning with Sparse Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01101/) (2022)
- [Temporally Disentangled Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13647/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Explainable Wastewater Digital Twins: Adaptive Context-Conditioned Structured Simulators with Self-Falsifying Decision Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19826/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Learning identifiable representations and models from low-level observations is helpful for an intelligent spacecraft to complete downstream tasks reliably. For temporal observations, to ensure that the data generating process is provably inverted, most existing works either assume the noise variables in the dynamic mechanisms are (conditionally) independent or require that the interventions can directly affect each latent variable. However, in practice, the relationship between the exogenous inputs/interventions and the latent variables may follow some complex deterministic mechanisms. In this work, we study the problem of identifiable representation and model learning for latent dynamic systems. The key idea is to use an inductive bias inspired by controllable canonical forms, which are sparse and input-dependent by definition. We prove that, for linear and affine nonlinear latent dynamic systems with sparse input matrices, it is possible to identify the latent variables up to scaling and determine the dynamic models up to some simple transformations. The results have the potential to provide some theoretical guarantees for developing more trustworthy decision-making and control methods for intelligent spacecrafts.
