Learning from Demonstration via Spatiotemporal Tubes for Unknown Euler-Lagrange Systems

Abstract

We present STT-LfD, a unified Learning from Demonstration (LfD) framework that integrates motion learning with control for unknown Euler-Lagrange systems. Unlike traditional decoupled approaches that track a fixed reference, the proposed method treats demonstrations as a data-driven safety specification. Using heteroscedastic Gaussian Processes, STT-LfD learns Spatiotemporal Tubes (STTs) as an intent envelope that capture time-varying precision requirements of a task. A closed-form feedback controller then enforces these learned constraints while respecting actuator limits, without requiring explicit system identification. The approach preserves the temporal structure of demonstrations, remains computationally efficient, and avoids explicit system identification. Hardware experiments on a mobile robot and a 7-DOF manipulator show that it outperforms baselines in robustness to disturbances and computational speed.