US Patent 10001760 Adaptive control system capable of recovering from unexpected situations

Described is a system for generating an adaptable predictive model of the dynamics of a complex system, such as a vehicle. A set of current sensory data describing the vehicle's current state is collected from the vehicle. A set of predictive models is evaluated to identify a predictive model that best matches the vehicle's current state. If a predictive model is identified as a match, then the predictive model is adapted to better fit the vehicle's current state, resulting in an adapted predictive model. If a match is not identified, then a new predictive model is generated through automatic model learning using the current set of sensory data. The adapted predictive model or the new predictive model is then used to generate control outputs for the vehicle.