Related papers: Safe Control Algorithms Using Energy Functions: A …
This article introduces the Pareto Control Barrier Function (PCBF) algorithm to maximize the inner safe set of dynamical systems under input constraints. Traditional Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) ensure safety by maintaining system…
Approximate methods to solve stochastic optimal control (SOC) problems have received significant interest from researchers in the past decade. Probabilistic inference approaches to SOC have been developed to solve nonlinear quadratic…
This paper addresses the challenge of integrating explicit hard constraints into the control barrier function (CBF) framework for ensuring safety in autonomous systems, including robots. We propose a novel data-driven method to derive CBFs…
We describe a shared control methodology that can, without knowledge of the task, be used to improve a human's control of a dynamic system, be used as a training mechanism, and be used in conjunction with Imitation Learning to generate…
This paper proposes a Safe Online Control-Informed Learning framework for safety-critical autonomous systems. The framework unifies optimal control, parameter estimation, and safety constraints into an online learning process. It employs an…
Safety is a critical feature of controller design for physical systems. When designing control policies, several approaches to guarantee this aspect of autonomy have been proposed, such as robust controllers or control barrier functions.…
We develop a control algorithm that ensures the safety, in terms of confinement in a set, of a system with unknown, 2nd-order nonlinear dynamics. The algorithm establishes novel connections between data-driven and robust, nonlinear control.…
Increasing penetration of renewable energy introduces significant uncertainty into power systems. Traditional simulation-based verification methods may not be applicable due to the unknown-but-bounded feature of the uncertainty sets.…
Designing provably safe control is a core problem in trustworthy autonomy. However, most prior work in this regard assumes either that the system dynamics are known or deterministic, or that the state and action space are finite,…
We consider the problem of safely coordinating ensembles of identical autonomous agents to conduct complex missions with conflicting safety requirements and under noisy control inputs. Using non-smooth control barrier functions (CBFs) and…
Reinforcement learning is a powerful technique for developing new robot behaviors. However, typical lack of safety guarantees constitutes a hurdle for its practical application on real robots. To address this issue, safe reinforcement…
Control barrier function (CBF)-based safety filters provide a systematic way to enforce state constraints, but they can significantly alter the closed-loop dynamics induced by a nominal, stabilizing controller. In particular, the resulting…
In recent years, both reinforcement learning and learning-based control -- as well as the study of their safety, which is crucial for deployment in real-world robots -- have gained significant traction. However, to adequately gauge the…
Feedback optimization refers to a class of methods that steer a control system to a steady state that solves an optimization problem. Despite tremendous progress on the topic, an important problem remains open: enforcing state constraints…
For a broad class of nonlinear systems, we formulate the problem of guaranteeing safety with optimality under constraints. Specifically, we define controlled safety for differential inclusions with constraints on the states and the inputs.…
When deploying autonomous agents in unstructured environments over sustained periods of time, adaptability and robustness oftentimes outweigh optimality as a primary consideration. In other words, safety and survivability constraints play a…
Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a powerful tool for enforcing safety constraints in control systems, but their direct application to complex, high-dimensional dynamics is often challenging. In many settings, safety certificates are…
Recently, there has been a surge of research on a class of methods called feedback optimization. These are methods to steer the state of a control system to an equilibrium that arises as the solution of an optimization problem. Despite the…
Safety-critical applications require controllers/policies that can guarantee safety with high confidence. The control barrier function is a useful tool to guarantee safety if we have access to the ground-truth system dynamics. In practice,…
This paper presents a constraint-lifting control framework for designing stabilizing controllers that guarantee the forward invariance of a prescribed safe set. State-of-the-art safety-enforcing methods, such as control barrier functions…