Estimating Evolving Functions with Dynamic Gaussian Processes

Abstract

This paper develops the Dynamic Gaussian Process (DGP), a framework for estimating functions governed by integro-difference equations (IDEs). IDEs model continuous functions that evolve with discrete-time dynamics and arise naturally from time-discretization of linear partial differential equations (PDEs). The DGP extends Gaussian process regression to time-varying functions and extends Kalman filtering to infinite-dimensional states. The DGP posterior remains a Gaussian process with closed-form mean and covariance updates, and separable kernel structure reduces the problem to a finite-dimensional Kalman filter on basis function coefficients. This paper extends the DGP to vector-valued states, enabling the treatment of higher-order PDEs, and provides a stability and approximation error analysis for the basis function approximation. The functional L2 estimation error decomposes exactly into in-subspace and out-of-subspace contributions, and all approximation errors vanish as the number of basis functions grows. The framework is demonstrated on the heat equation and on the wave equation, the latter with a vector-valued state. Code is available at https://github.com/JvHulst/Dynamic_Gaussian_Processes.