English

Learning Certified Neural Network Controllers Using Contraction and Interval Analysis

Systems and Control 2026-03-31 v1 Systems and Control

Abstract

We present a novel framework that jointly trains a neural network controller and a neural Riemannian metric with rigorous closed-loop contraction guarantees using formal bound propagation. Directly bounding the symmetric Riemannian contraction linear matrix inequality causes unnecessary overconservativeness due to poor dependency management. Instead, we analyze an asymmetric matrix function GG, where 2n2^n GPU-parallelized corner checks of its interval hull verify that an entire interval subset XX is a contraction region in a single shot. This eliminates the sample complexity problems encountered with previous Lipschitz-based guarantees. Additionally, for control-affine systems under a Killing field assumption, our method produces an explicit tracking controller capable of exponentially stabilizing any dynamically feasible trajectory using just two forward inferences of the learned policy. Using JAX and immrax\texttt{immrax} for linear bound propagation, we apply this approach to a full 10-state quadrotor model. In under 10 minutes of post-JIT training, we simultaneously learn a control policy π\pi, a neural contraction metric Θ\Theta, and a verified 10-dimensional contraction region XX.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.28011,
  title  = {Learning Certified Neural Network Controllers Using Contraction and Interval Analysis},
  author = {Akash Harapanahalli and Samuel Coogan and Alexander Davydov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.28011},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:43:23.699Z