Bayesian Safety Guarantees for Port-Hamiltonian Systems with Learned Energy Functions

arXiv cs.RO / 4/6/2026

💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep AnalysisModels & Research

Key Points

  • The paper addresses how control barrier functions for port-Hamiltonian systems degrade under model uncertainty when the Hamiltonian is learned from data.
  • It proposes a two-stage Bayesian method that converts posterior uncertainty in a GP-learned Hamiltonian into credible energy-storage bands and Bayesian safety barriers that form high-probability inner approximations of the true safe set.
  • It separately propagates vector-field (dynamics drift) uncertainty into the CBF inequality via a drift credible ellipsoid, with independently tunable credibility budgets.
  • The resulting end-to-end safety guarantee is at least the combined failure probability, i.e., the safe filter guarantees safety with probability at least 1 - (η_dr + η_ptB).
  • Experiments on a mass-spring oscillator and comparisons on a planar manipulator demonstrate improved safety preservation under limited/noisy measurements and a larger safe set than an unstructured GP-CBF approach.

Abstract

Control barrier functions for port-Hamiltonian systems inherit model uncertainty when the Hamiltonian is learned from data. We show how to propagate this uncertainty into a safety filter with independently tunable credibility budgets. To propagate this uncertainty, we employ a two-stage Bayesian approach. First, posterior prediction over the Hamiltonian yields credible bands for the energy storage, producing Bayesian barriers whose safe sets are high-probability inner approximations of the true allowable set with credibility 1 - (\eta_{\mathrm{ptB}}). Independently, a drift credible ellipsoid accounts for vector field uncertainty in the CBF inequality with credibility 1 - (\eta_{\rm dr}). Since energy and drift uncertainties enter through disjoint credible sets, the end-to-end safety guarantee is at least 1 - (\eta_{\rm dr} + \eta_{\mathrm{ptB}}). Experiments on a mass-spring oscillator with a GP-learned Hamiltonian show that the proposed filter preserves safety despite limited and noisy observations. Moreover, we show that the proposed framework yields a larger safe set than an unstructured GP-CBF alternative on a planar manipulator.