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• Two new computational algorithms are proposed for estimating the Lyapunov exponents from time series data in order to test the null hypothesis of a chaotic behavior. • The results obtained provide robust evidence that the Jacobian indirect methods provide better estimates than traditional direct methods in all the experiments we have conducted. • We have shown empirically that the algorithms proposed are robust to the presence of (small) measurement errors because the results obtained are comparable to those which are noise free. • The empirical size of the algorithms proposed decreased and the empirical power increased as the sample size increased which means that our hypothesis tests are consistent and reliable. • This paper opens a new research line where new contributions may appear considering new machine learning methods and deep learning algorithms for estimating the Lyapunov exponents from time series data. Most of the existing methods and techniques for the detection of chaotic behaviour from empirical time series try to quantify the well-known sensitivity to initial conditions through the estimation of the so-called Lyapunov exponents corresponding to the data generating system, even if this system is unknown. Some of these methods are designed to operate in noise-free environments, such as those methods that directly quantify the separation rate of two initially close trajectories. As an alternative, this paper provides two nonlinear indirect regression methods for estimating the Lyapunov exponents on a noisy environment. We extend the global Jacobian method, by using local polynomial kernel regressions and local neural net kernel models. We apply such methods to several noise-contaminated time series coming from different data generating processes. The results show that in general, the Jacobian indirect methods provide better results than the traditional direct methods for both clean and noisy time series. Moreover, the local Jacobian indirect methods provide more robust and accurate fit than the global ones, with the methods using local networks obtaining more accurate results than those using local polynomials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]