Sequential data often originates from diverse environments. Across them exist both shared regularities and environment specifics. To learn robust cross-environment descriptions of sequences we introduce disentangled state space models (DSSM). In the latent space of DSSM environment-invariant state dynamics is explicitly disentangled from environment-specific information governing that dynamics. We empirically show that such separation enables robust prediction, sequence manipulation and environment characterization. We also propose an unsupervised VAE-based training procedure to learn DSSM as Bayesian filters. In our experiments, we demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in controlled generation and prediction of bouncing ball video sequences across varying gravitational influences.
DISENTANGLED STATE SPACE MODELS The paper presents a generative state space model using a global latent variable E to capture environment-specific information.