Synthesizing Min-Max Control Barrier Functions For Switched Affine Systems
Abstract
We study the problem of synthesizing non-smooth control barrier functions (CBFs) for continuous-time switched affine systems. Switched affine systems are defined by a set of affine dynamical modes, wherein the control consists of a state-based switching signal that determines the current operating mode. The control barrier functions seek to maintain the system state inside a control invariant set that excludes a given set of unsafe states. We consider CBFs that take the form of pointwise minima and maxima over a finite set of affine functions. Our approach uses ideas from nonsmooth analysis to formulate conditions for min- and max- affine control barrier functions. We show how a feedback switching law can be extracted from a given CBF. Next, we show how to automate the process of synthesizing CBFs given a system description through a tree-search algorithm inspired by branch-and-cut methods from combinatorial optimization. Finally, we demonstrate our approach on a series of interesting examples of switched affine systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.10296,
title = {Synthesizing Min-Max Control Barrier Functions For Switched Affine Systems},
author = {Sara Kamali and Guillaume O. Berger and Sriram Sankaranarayanan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.10296},
year = {2025}
}