Geometry-Constrained Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks: Learning Edge Geometry via Banach Duality

Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs) replace fixed activations in deep architectures with learnable univariate edge functions, making the choice of edge parametrisation central. Existing variants rely on fixed bases such as splines, polynomials, or Fourier features, which impose a function-space geometry before data are observed. We introduce geometry-constrained KANs, a family of edge activations derived from Banach duality maps in which the geometry itself is learned through a scalar exponent $p > 1$ per edge. This exponent controls the qualitative response: sub-Euclidean values produce sharp threshold-like behaviour, $p = 2$ recovers the linear regime, and larger values produce flatter responses near the origin. Beyond expressivity, the exponent also modulates sensitivity: smaller values reduce amplification of perturbations, providing an implicit regularisation effect without introducing an explicit shrinkage hyperparameter. Across 50 Feynman symbolic regression equations, geometry-constrained KANs match strong fixed-basis baselines on clean data while substantially improving robustness under distribution shift. In particular, they outperform cross-validated spline baselines in 85 of 90 data-scarcity settings and degrade significantly less under noise (3.7× versus 21.6× for splines). Learned exponents are interpretable and stable, revealing consistent geometric structure across equation families and input dimensions.