Sample-Efficient Online Control Policy Learning with Real-Time Recursive Model Updates

Abstract: Data-driven control methods need to be sample-efficient and lightweight, especially when data acquisition and computational resources are limited -- such as during learning on hardware. Most modern data-driven methods require large datasets and struggle with real-time updates of models, limiting their performance in dynamic environments. Koopman theory formally represents nonlinear systems as linear models over observables, and Koopman representations can be determined from data in an optimization-friendly setting with potentially rapid model updates. In this paper, we present a highly sample-efficient, Koopman-based learning pipeline: Recursive Koopman Learning (RKL). We identify sufficient conditions for model convergence and provide formal algorithmic analysis supporting our claim that RKL is lightweight and fast, with complexity independent of dataset size. We validate our method on a simulated planar two-link arm and a hybrid nonlinear hardware system with soft actuators, showing that real-time recursive Koopman model updates improve the sample efficiency and stability of data-driven controller synthesis -- requiring only <10% of the data compared to benchmarks. The high-performance C++ codebase is open-sourced. Website: https://www.zixinatom990.com/home/robotics/corl-2025-recursive-koopman-learning.