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This tutorial paper presents recent work of the authors that extends the theory of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to address practical challenges in the synthesis of safe controllers for autonomous systems and robots. We present novel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-29 Kunal Garg , James Usevitch , Joseph Breeden , Mitchell Black , Devansh Agrawal , Hardik Parwana , Dimitra Panagou

In this paper, we propose a novel Control Barrier Function (CBF) based controller for nonlinear systems with complex, time-varying input constraints. To deal with these constraints, we introduce an auxiliary control input to transform the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-20 Yaosheng Deng , Yang Bai , Yujie Wang , Masaki Ogura , Mir Feroskhan

Learning-based controllers, such as neural network (NN) controllers, can show high empirical performance but lack formal safety guarantees. To address this issue, control barrier functions (CBFs) have been applied as a safety filter to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-10 Shuo Yang , Shaoru Chen , Victor M. Preciado , Rahul Mangharam

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have become a popular tool to enforce safety of a control system. CBFs are commonly utilized in a quadratic program formulation (CBF-QP) as safety-critical constraints. A class $\mathcal{K}$ function in CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-12 Hengbo Ma , Bike Zhang , Masayoshi Tomizuka , Koushil Sreenath

Among the promising approaches to enforce safety in control systems, learning Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) from expert demonstrations has emerged as an effective strategy. However, a critical challenge remains: verifying that the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Sumeadh MS , Kevin Dsouza , Ravi Prakash

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are an effective model-based tool to formally certify the safety of a system. With the growing complexity of modern control problems, CBFs have received increasing attention in both optimization-based and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Lishuo Pan , Mattia Catellani , Thales C. Silva , Lorenzo Sabattini , Nora Ayanian

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a powerful tool in the design of safety-critical controllers for nonlinear systems. In modern applications, complex systems often involve the feedback interconnection of subsystems evolving…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-03 Stefano Di Gregorio , Guido Carnevale , Giuseppe Notarstefano

In this paper we present the implementation of a Control Barrier Function (CBF) using a quadratic program (QP) formulation that provides obstacle avoidance for a robotic manipulator arm system. CBF is a control technique that has emerged…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Stephen McIlvanna , Nhat Nguyen Minh , Yuzhu Sun , Mien Van , Wasif Naeem

Learning-based methods for constructing control barrier functions (CBFs) are gaining popularity for ensuring safe robot control. A major limitation of existing methods is their reliance on extensive sampling over the state space or online…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-17 Hongzhan Yu , Seth Farrell , Ryo Yoshimitsu , Zhizhen Qin , Henrik I. Christensen , Sicun Gao

In this work, we consider the problem of designing a safety filter for a nonlinear uncertain control system. Our goal is to augment an arbitrary controller with a safety filter such that the overall closed-loop system is guaranteed to stay…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-04-11 Lukas Brunke , Siqi Zhou , Angela P. Schoellig

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are a practical approach for designing safety-critical controllers, but constructing them for arbitrary nonlinear dynamical systems remains a challenge. Recent efforts have explored learning-based methods,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-20 Manan Tayal , Aditya Singh , Pushpak Jagtap , Shishir Kolathaya

Hybrid dynamical systems are ubiquitous as practical robotic applications often involve both continuous states and discrete switchings. Safety is a primary concern for hybrid robotic systems. Existing safety-critical control approaches for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Shuo Yang , Yu Chen , Xiang Yin , George J. Pappas , Rahul Mangharam

Autonomous robot navigation can be particularly demanding, especially when the surrounding environment is not known and safety of the robot is crucial. This work relates to the synthesis of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) through data for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Marvin Harms , Mihir Kulkarni , Nikhil Khedekar , Martin Jacquet , Kostas Alexis

Control barrier function (CBF) has recently started to serve as a basis to develop approaches for enforcing safety requirements in control systems. However, constructing such function for a general system is a non-trivial task. This paper…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Zihao Liang , Jason King Ching Lo

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been demonstrated as an effective method for safety-critical control of autonomous systems. Although CBFs are simple to deploy, their design remains challenging, motivating the development of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Bojan Derajić , Sebastian Bernhard , Wolfgang Hönig

Ensuring safe exploration in high-dimensional systems with unknown dynamics remains a significant challenge. Existing safe reinforcement learning methods often provide safety guarantees only in expectation, which can still lead to safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rahul Narava , Siddharth Verma , Ojas Jain , Shashi Shekhar Jha , Mayank Shekhar Jha

A predictive control barrier function (PCBF) based safety filter is a modular framework to verify safety of a control input by predicting a future trajectory. The approach relies on the solution of two optimization problems, first computing…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-07-25 Alexandre Didier , Robin C. Jacobs , Jerome Sieber , Kim P. Wabersich , Melanie N. Zeilinger

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been widely used for synthesizing controllers in safety-critical applications. When used as a safety filter, it provides a simple and computationally efficient way to obtain safe controls from a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-03-13 Bolun Dai , Heming Huang , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

This paper proposes a safety controller for control-affine nonlinear systems with unmodelled dynamics and disturbances to improve closed-loop robustness. Uncertainty estimation-based control barrier functions (CBFs) are utilized to ensure…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Ersin Daş , Skylar X. Wei , Joel W. Burdick

In this paper, we consider a way to safely navigate the robots in unknown environments using measurement data from sensory devices. The control barrier function (CBF) is one of the promising approaches to encode safety requirements of the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-11 Wataru Hashimoto , Kazumune Hashimoto , Akifumi Wachi , Xun Shen , Masako Kishida , Shigemasa Takai