What Observables Are Needed for Precision Data-Enabled Learning of Inverse Operators?

The advent of easy access to large amount of data has sparked interest in directly developing the relationships between input and output of dynamic systems. A challenge is that in addition to the applied input and the measured output, the dynamics can also depend on hidden states that are not directly measured. In general, it is unclear what type of data, such as past input and or past output is needed, to learn inverse operators (that predict the input needed to track a desired output for control purposes) with a desired precision. The main contribution of this work is to show that, irrespective of the selected model, removing the hidden-state dependence and achieving a desired precision of inverse operators require (i) a sufficiently-long past history of the output and (ii) sufficiently-precise estimates of the output's instantaneous time derivatives that are necessary and sufficient for linear systems, and under some conditions, for nonlinear systems. This insight, about the required observables (output history and derivative) for removing the hidden-state dependence and achieving precision, is used to develop a data-enabled algorithm to learn the inverse operator for multi-input multi-output square systems. Simulation examples are used to illustrate that neural nets (with universal approximation property) can learn the inverse operator with sufficient precision only if the required observables, identified in this work, are included in training.