We consider the problem of predictive monitoring (PM), i.e., predicting at runtime the satisfaction of a desired property from the current system's state. Due to its relevance for runtime safety assurance and online control, PM methods need to be efficient to enable timely interventions against predicted violations, while providing correctness guarantees. We introduce \textit{quantitative predictive monitoring (QPM)}, the first PM method to support stochastic processes and rich specifications given in Signal Temporal Logic (STL). Unlike most of the existing PM techniques that predict whether or not some property $\phi$ is satisfied, QPM provides a quantitative measure of satisfaction by predicting the quantitative (aka robust) STL semantics of $\phi$. QPM derives prediction intervals that are highly efficient to compute and with probabilistic guarantees, in that the intervals cover with arbitrary probability the STL robustness values relative to the stochastic evolution of the system. To do so, we take a machine-learning approach and leverage recent advances in conformal inference for quantile regression, thereby avoiding expensive Monte-Carlo simulations at runtime to estimate the intervals. We also show how our monitors can be combined in a compositional manner to handle composite formulas, without retraining the predictors nor sacrificing the guarantees. We demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of QPM over a benchmark of four discrete-time stochastic processes with varying degrees of complexity.

在过去几十年中，已经提出了各种方法，用于估计回归设置中的预测间隔，包括贝叶斯方法，集合方法，直接间隔估计方法和保形预测方法。重要问题是这些方法的校准：生成的预测间隔应该具有预定义的覆盖水平，而不会过于保守。在这项工作中，我们从概念和实验的角度审查上述四类方法。结果来自各个域的基准数据集突出显示从一个数据集中的性能的大波动。这些观察可能归因于违反某些类别的某些方法所固有的某些假设。我们说明了如何将共形预测用作提供不具有校准步骤的方法的方法的一般校准程序。

在这项工作中，我们对基本思想和新颖的发展进行了综述的综述，这是基于最小的假设的一种无创新的，无分配的，非参数预测的方法 - 能够以非常简单的方式预测集屈服在有限样本案例中，在统计意义上也有效。论文中提供的深入讨论涵盖了共形预测的理论基础，然后继续列出原始想法的更高级的发展和改编。

When used in complex engineered systems, such as communication networks, artificial intelligence (AI) models should be not only as accurate as possible, but also well calibrated. A well-calibrated AI model is one that can reliably quantify the uncertainty of its decisions, assigning high confidence levels to decisions that are likely to be correct and low confidence levels to decisions that are likely to be erroneous. This paper investigates the application of conformal prediction as a general framework to obtain AI models that produce decisions with formal calibration guarantees. Conformal prediction transforms probabilistic predictors into set predictors that are guaranteed to contain the correct answer with a probability chosen by the designer. Such formal calibration guarantees hold irrespective of the true, unknown, distribution underlying the generation of the variables of interest, and can be defined in terms of ensemble or time-averaged probabilities. In this paper, conformal prediction is applied for the first time to the design of AI for communication systems in conjunction to both frequentist and Bayesian learning, focusing on demodulation, modulation classification, and channel prediction.

机器学习方法越来越广泛地用于医疗保健，运输和金融等高危环境中。在这些环境中，重要的是，模型要产生校准的不确定性以反映其自信并避免失败。在本文中，我们调查了有关深度学习的不确定性定量（UQ）的最新著作，特别是针对其数学属性和广泛适用性的无分配保形方法。我们将涵盖共形方法的理论保证，引入在时空数据的背景下提高UQ的校准和效率的技术，并讨论UQ在安全决策中的作用。

This paper presents a novel probabilistic forecasting method called ensemble conformalized quantile regression (EnCQR). EnCQR constructs distribution-free and approximately marginally valid prediction intervals (PIs), which are suitable for nonstationary and heteroscedastic time series data. EnCQR can be applied on top of a generic forecasting model, including deep learning architectures. EnCQR exploits a bootstrap ensemble estimator, which enables the use of conformal predictors for time series by removing the requirement of data exchangeability. The ensemble learners are implemented as generic machine learning algorithms performing quantile regression, which allow the length of the PIs to adapt to local variability in the data. In the experiments, we predict time series characterized by a different amount of heteroscedasticity. The results demonstrate that EnCQR outperforms models based only on quantile regression or conformal prediction, and it provides sharper, more informative, and valid PIs.

The main objective of Prognostics and Health Management is to estimate the Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL), namely, the time that a system or a piece of equipment is still in working order before starting to function incorrectly. In recent years, numerous machine learning algorithms have been proposed for RUL estimation, mainly focusing on providing more accurate RUL predictions. However, there are many sources of uncertainty in the problem, such as inherent randomness of systems failure, lack of knowledge regarding their future states, and inaccuracy of the underlying predictive models, making it infeasible to predict the RULs precisely. Hence, it is of utmost importance to quantify the uncertainty alongside the RUL predictions. In this work, we investigate the conformal prediction (CP) framework that represents uncertainty by predicting sets of possible values for the target variable (intervals in the case of RUL) instead of making point predictions. Under very mild technical assumptions, CP formally guarantees that the actual value (true RUL) is covered by the predicted set with a degree of certainty that can be prespecified. We study three CP algorithms to conformalize any single-point RUL predictor and turn it into a valid interval predictor. Finally, we conformalize two single-point RUL predictors, deep convolutional neural networks and gradient boosting, and illustrate their performance on the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS) data sets.

现在通常用于高风险设置，如医疗诊断，如医疗诊断，那么需要不确定量化，以避免后续模型失败。无分发的不确定性量化（无分布UQ）是用户友好的范式，用于为这种预测创建统计上严格的置信区间/集合。批判性地，间隔/集合有效而不进行分布假设或模型假设，即使具有最多许多DataPoints也具有显式保证。此外，它们适应输入的难度;当输入示例很困难时，不确定性间隔/集很大，信号传达模型可能是错误的。在没有多大的工作和没有再培训的情况下，可以在任何潜在的算法（例如神经网络）上使用无分​​发方法，以产生置信度集，以便包含用户指定概率，例如90％。实际上，这些方法易于理解和一般，应用于计算机视觉，自然语言处理，深度加强学习等领域出现的许多现代预测问题。这种实践介绍是针对对无需统计学家的免费UQ的实际实施感兴趣的读者。我们通过实际的理论和无分发UQ的应用领导读者，从保形预测开始，并使无关的任何风险的分布控制，如虚假发现率，假阳性分布检测，等等。我们将包括Python中的许多解释性插图，示例和代码样本，具有Pytorch语法。目标是提供读者对无分配UQ的工作理解，使它们能够将置信间隔放在算法上，其中包含一个自包含的文档。

Automated synthesis of provably correct controllers for cyber-physical systems is crucial for deploying these systems in safety-critical scenarios. However, their hybrid features and stochastic or unknown behaviours make this synthesis problem challenging. In this paper, we propose a method for synthesizing controllers for Markov jump linear systems (MJLSs), a particular class of cyber-physical systems, that certifiably satisfy a requirement expressed as a specification in probabilistic computation tree logic (PCTL). An MJLS consists of a finite set of linear dynamics with unknown additive disturbances, where jumps between these modes are governed by a Markov decision process (MDP). We consider both the case where the transition function of this MDP is given by probability intervals or where it is completely unknown. Our approach is based on generating a finite-state abstraction which captures both the discrete and the continuous behaviour of the original system. We formalise such abstraction as an interval Markov decision process (iMDP): intervals of transition probabilities are computed using sampling techniques from the so-called "scenario approach", resulting in a probabilistically sound approximation of the MJLS. This iMDP abstracts both the jump dynamics between modes, as well as the continuous dynamics within the modes. To demonstrate the efficacy of our technique, we apply our method to multiple realistic benchmark problems, in particular, temperature control, and aerial vehicle delivery problems.

背景信息：在过去几年中，机器学习（ML）一直是许多创新的核心。然而，包括在所谓的“安全关键”系统中，例如汽车或航空的系统已经被证明是非常具有挑战性的，因为ML的范式转变为ML带来完全改变传统认证方法。目的：本文旨在阐明与ML为基础的安全关键系统认证有关的挑战，以及文献中提出的解决方案，以解决它们，回答问题的问题如何证明基于机器学习的安全关键系统？'方法：我们开展2015年至2020年至2020年之间发布的研究论文的系统文献综述（SLR），涵盖了与ML系统认证有关的主题。总共确定了217篇论文涵盖了主题，被认为是ML认证的主要支柱：鲁棒性，不确定性，解释性，验证，安全强化学习和直接认证。我们分析了每个子场的主要趋势和问题，并提取了提取的论文的总结。结果：单反结果突出了社区对该主题的热情，以及在数据集和模型类型方面缺乏多样性。它还强调需要进一步发展学术界和行业之间的联系，以加深域名研究。最后，它还说明了必须在上面提到的主要支柱之间建立连接的必要性，这些主要柱主要主要研究。结论：我们强调了目前部署的努力，以实现ML基于ML的软件系统，并讨论了一些未来的研究方向。

在将任务委派给自治系统之前，人类操作员可能需要保证对系统的行为。本文扩展了对功能数据的共形预测的先前工作，并扩展了整数分数回归，以提供对马尔可夫决策过程（MDP）执行固定控制策略的自主系统的未来行为的共形预测间隔。预测间隔是通过将共校正校正应用于分位数回归计算的预测间隔来构建的。结果间隔保证，使用概率$ 1- \ delta $，观察到的轨迹将位于预测间隔内，其中计算概率相对于起始状态分布和MDP的随机性。该方法在MDP上进行了用于入侵物种管理和Starcraft2战斗的方法。

Capturing uncertainty in models of complex dynamical systems is crucial to designing safe controllers. Stochastic noise causes aleatoric uncertainty, whereas imprecise knowledge of model parameters leads to epistemic uncertainty. Several approaches use formal abstractions to synthesize policies that satisfy temporal specifications related to safety and reachability. However, the underlying models exclusively capture aleatoric but not epistemic uncertainty, and thus require that model parameters are known precisely. Our contribution to overcoming this restriction is a novel abstraction-based controller synthesis method for continuous-state models with stochastic noise and uncertain parameters. By sampling techniques and robust analysis, we capture both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty, with a user-specified confidence level, in the transition probability intervals of a so-called interval Markov decision process (iMDP). We synthesize an optimal policy on this iMDP, which translates (with the specified confidence level) to a feedback controller for the continuous model with the same performance guarantees. Our experimental benchmarks confirm that accounting for epistemic uncertainty leads to controllers that are more robust against variations in parameter values.

We develop a method to generate predictive regions that cover a multivariate response variable with a user-specified probability. Our work is composed of two components. First, we use a deep generative model to learn a representation of the response that has a unimodal distribution. Existing multiple-output quantile regression approaches are effective in such cases, so we apply them on the learned representation, and then transform the solution to the original space of the response. This process results in a flexible and informative region that can have an arbitrary shape, a property that existing methods lack. Second, we propose an extension of conformal prediction to the multivariate response setting that modifies any method to return sets with a pre-specified coverage level. The desired coverage is theoretically guaranteed in the finite-sample case for any distribution. Experiments conducted on both real and synthetic data show that our method constructs regions that are significantly smaller compared to existing techniques.

We present a new distribution-free conformal prediction algorithm for sequential data (e.g., time series), called the \textit{sequential predictive conformal inference} (\texttt{SPCI}). We specifically account for the nature that the time series data are non-exchangeable, and thus many existing conformal prediction algorithms based on temporal residuals are not applicable. The main idea is to exploit the temporal dependence of conformity scores; thus, the past conformity scores contain information about future ones. Then we cast the problem of conformal prediction interval as predicting the quantile of a future residual, given a prediction algorithm. Theoretically, we establish asymptotic valid conditional coverage upon extending consistency analyses in quantile regression. Using simulation and real-data experiments, we demonstrate a significant reduction in interval width of \texttt{SPCI} compared to other existing methods under the desired empirical coverage.

我们开发了一个框架，用于在线环境中使用有效的覆盖范围保证构建不确定性集，其中基础数据分布可以急剧（甚至对手）随着时间的推移而发生巨大变化。我们提出的技术非常灵活，因为它可以与任何在线学习算法集成，需要最低限度的实施工作和计算成本。我们方法比现有替代方案的关键优势（也基于共形推断）是我们不需要将数据分为培训和保持校准集。这使我们能够以完全在线的方式拟合预测模型，并利用最新的观察结果来构建校准的不确定性集。因此，与现有技术相反，（i）我们构建的集合可以迅速适应分布的新变化； （ii）我们的过程不需要在每个时间步骤进行改装。使用合成和现实世界的基准数据集，我们证明了理论的有效性以及提案对现有技术的提高绩效。为了证明所提出的方法的更大灵活性，我们展示了如何为多出输出回归问题构造有效的间隔，而以前的顺序校准方法由于不切实际的计算和内存需求而无法处理。

A flexible method is developed to construct a confidence interval for the frequency of a queried object in a very large data set, based on a much smaller sketch of the data. The approach requires no knowledge of the data distribution or of the details of the sketching algorithm; instead, it constructs provably valid frequentist confidence intervals for random queries using a conformal inference approach. After achieving marginal coverage for random queries under the assumption of data exchangeability, the proposed method is extended to provide stronger inferences accounting for possibly heterogeneous frequencies of different random queries, redundant queries, and distribution shifts. While the presented methods are broadly applicable, this paper focuses on use cases involving the count-min sketch algorithm and a non-linear variation thereof, to facilitate comparison to prior work. In particular, the developed methods are compared empirically to frequentist and Bayesian alternatives, through simulations and experiments with data sets of SARS-CoV-2 DNA sequences and classic English literature.

对未来观察的预测是一个重要且具有挑战性的问题。分别量化预测不确定性使用预测区域和预测分布的两种主流方法，后者认为更具信息性，因为它可以执行其他与预测相关的任务。有效性的标准概念（我们在这里称为1型有效性）着重于预测区域的覆盖范围，而与预测分布执行的其他与预测相关的任务相关的有效性概念则缺乏。在这里，我们提出了一个新概念，称为2型有效性，与这些其他预测任务有关。我们建立了2型有效性和相干性能之间的联系，并表明为实现它而需要不精确的概率考虑因素。我们继续表明，可以通过将共形预测输出作为辅音合理性度量的轮廓函数来实现两种类型的预测有效性。我们还基于新的非参数推论模型构建提供了保​​形预测的替代表征，其中辅音的出现是自然的，并证明了其有效性。

The notion of uncertainty is of major importance in machine learning and constitutes a key element of machine learning methodology. In line with the statistical tradition, uncertainty has long been perceived as almost synonymous with standard probability and probabilistic predictions. Yet, due to the steadily increasing relevance of machine learning for practical applications and related issues such as safety requirements, new problems and challenges have recently been identified by machine learning scholars, and these problems may call for new methodological developments. In particular, this includes the importance of distinguishing between (at least) two different types of uncertainty, often referred to as aleatoric and epistemic. In this paper, we provide an introduction to the topic of uncertainty in machine learning as well as an overview of attempts so far at handling uncertainty in general and formalizing this distinction in particular.

Motivated by the fragility of neural network (NN) controllers in safety-critical applications, we present a data-driven framework for verifying the risk of stochastic dynamical systems with NN controllers. Given a stochastic control system, an NN controller, and a specification equipped with a notion of trace robustness (e.g., constraint functions or signal temporal logic), we collect trajectories from the system that may or may not satisfy the specification. In particular, each of the trajectories produces a robustness value that indicates how well (severely) the specification is satisfied (violated). We then compute risk metrics over these robustness values to estimate the risk that the NN controller will not satisfy the specification. We are further interested in quantifying the difference in risk between two systems, and we show how the risk estimated from a nominal system can provide an upper bound the risk of a perturbed version of the system. In particular, the tightness of this bound depends on the closeness of the systems in terms of the closeness of their system trajectories. For Lipschitz continuous and incrementally input-to-state stable systems, we show how to exactly quantify system closeness with varying degrees of conservatism, while we estimate system closeness for more general systems from data in our experiments. We demonstrate our risk verification approach on two case studies, an underwater vehicle and an F1/10 autonomous car.

这本数字本书包含在物理模拟的背景下与深度学习相关的一切实际和全面的一切。尽可能多，所有主题都带有Jupyter笔记本的形式的动手代码示例，以便快速入门。除了标准的受监督学习的数据中，我们将看看物理丢失约束，更紧密耦合的学习算法，具有可微分的模拟，以及加强学习和不确定性建模。我们生活在令人兴奋的时期：这些方法具有从根本上改变计算机模拟可以实现的巨大潜力。