Opt-ODENet: Neural ODE Controller Design with Differentiable Optimization Layers for Safety and Stability
Abstract
Designing controllers that achieve task objectives while ensuring safety is a key challenge in control systems. This work introduces Opt-ODENet, a Neural ODE framework with a differentiable Quadratic Programming (QP) optimization layer to enforce constraints as hard requirements. Eliminating the reliance on nominal controllers or large datasets, our framework solves the optimal control problem directly using Neural ODEs. Stability and convergence are ensured through Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) in the loss function, while Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) embedded in the QP layer enforce real-time safety. By integrating the differentiable QP layer with Neural ODEs, we demonstrate compatibility with the adjoint method for gradient computation, enabling the learning of the CBF class-$\mathcal{K}$ function and control network parameters. Experiments validate its effectiveness in balancing safety and performance.
Cite
Text
Miao et al. "Opt-ODENet: Neural ODE Controller Design with Differentiable Optimization Layers for Safety and Stability." Proceedings of the 7th Annual Learning for Dynamics \& Control Conference, 2025.Markdown
[Miao et al. "Opt-ODENet: Neural ODE Controller Design with Differentiable Optimization Layers for Safety and Stability." Proceedings of the 7th Annual Learning for Dynamics \& Control Conference, 2025.](https://mlanthology.org/l4dc/2025/miao2025l4dc-optodenet/)BibTeX
@inproceedings{miao2025l4dc-optodenet,
title = {{Opt-ODENet: Neural ODE Controller Design with Differentiable Optimization Layers for Safety and Stability}},
author = {Miao, Keyan and Zhao, Liqun and Wang, Han and Gatsis, Konstantinos and Papachristodoulou, Antonis},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 7th Annual Learning for Dynamics \& Control Conference},
year = {2025},
pages = {1217-1229},
volume = {283},
url = {https://mlanthology.org/l4dc/2025/miao2025l4dc-optodenet/}
}