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Related papers: Data-Driven Robust Barrier Functions for Safe, Lon…

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This paper introduces differentiable higher-order control barrier functions (CBF) that are end-to-end trainable together with learning systems. CBFs are usually overly conservative, while guaranteeing safety. Here, we address their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-23 Wei Xiao , Ramin Hasani , Xiao Li , Daniela Rus

We consider the problem of safely exploring a static and unknown environment while learning valid control barrier functions (CBFs) from sensor data. Existing works either assume known environments, target specific dynamics models, or use…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-03 Paul Lutkus , Deepika Anantharaman , Stephen Tu , Lars Lindemann

This paper investigates the problem of composing multiple control barrier functions (CBFs) -- and matrix control barrier functions (MCBFs) -- through logical and combinatorial operations. Standard CBF formulations naturally enable…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-22 Pio Ong , Haejoon Lee , Tamas G. Molnar , Dimitra Panagou , Aaron D. Ames

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

We propose a novel class of risk-aware control barrier functions (RA-CBFs) for the control of stochastic safety-critical systems. Leveraging a result from the stochastic level-crossing literature, we deviate from the martingale theory that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-22 Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Danil Prokhorov , Dimitra Panagou

The synthesis of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) often involves demanding computations or a meticulous construction. However, structural properties of the system dynamics and constraints have the potential to mitigate these challenges. In…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-05 Adrian Wiltz , Dimos V. Dimarogonas

Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) can be combined, typically by means of Quadratic Programs (QPs), to design controllers that achieve performance and safety objectives. However, a significant limitation…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-18 Hugo Matias , Daniel Silvestre

Ensuring the safety of dynamical systems is crucial, where collision avoidance is a primary concern. Recently, control barrier functions (CBFs) have emerged as an effective method to integrate safety constraints into control synthesis…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-21 Shiqing Wei , Rooholla Khorrambakht , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Vinicius Mariano Gonçalves , Farshad Khorrami

Sampling-based motion planning methods for manipulators in crowded environments often suffer from expensive collision checking and high sampling complexity, which make them difficult to use in real time. To address this issue, we propose a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Mingxin Yu , Chenning Yu , M-Mahdi Naddaf-Sh , Devesh Upadhyay , Sicun Gao , Chuchu Fan

Control barrier functions have shown great success in addressing control problems with safety guarantees. These methods usually find the next safe control input by solving an online quadratic programming problem. However, model uncertainty…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-24 Chuanzheng Wang , Yinan Li , Yiming Meng , Stephen L. Smith , Jun Liu

Uncertainty-aware controllers that guarantee safety are critical for safety critical applications. Among such controllers, Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) based approaches are popular because they are fast, yet safe. However, most such…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Masoud Ataei , Vikas Dhiman

Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have been recently utilized in the design of provably safe feedback control laws for nonlinear systems. These feedback control methods typically compute the next control input by solving an online Quadratic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-23 Shakiba Yaghoubi , Georgios Fainekos , Sriram Sankaranarayanan

This paper presents a safety-critical approach to the coordination of robots in dynamic environments. To this end, we leverage control barrier functions (CBFs) with the forward reachable set to guarantee the safe coordination of the robots…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-15 Jeeseop Kim , Jaemin Lee , Aaron D. Ames

The integration of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in industrial environments, particularly warehouses, has revolutionized logistics and operational efficiency. However, ensuring the safety of human workers in dynamic, shared spaces remains…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-31 Seth Farrell , Chenghao Li , Hongzhan Yu , Ryo Yoshimitsu , Sicun Gao , Henrik I. Christensen

Control barrier function (CBF)-based methods provide the minimum modification necessary to formally guarantee safety in the context of quadratic programming, and strict safety guarantee for safety critical systems. However, most CBF-related…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-27 Xiaoxiao Li , Zhirui Sun , Hongpeng Wang , Shuai Li , Jiankun Wang

This manuscript considers the problem of ensuring stability and safety during formation control with distributed multi-agent systems in the presence of parametric uncertainty in the dynamics and limited communication. We propose an…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-24 Jose A. Solano-Castellanos , Peter A. Fisher , Anuradha Annaswamy

The control barrier function (CBF) has become a fundamental tool in safety-critical systems design since its invention. Typically, the quadratic optimization framework is employed to accommodate CBFs, control Lyapunov functions (CLFs),…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-17 Junjun Xie , Liang Hu , Jiahu Qin , Jun Yang , Huijun Gao

Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to develop feedback controllers that endow systems with properties such as safety and stability. The guarantees ensured by these controllers often rely on accurate estimates of the system state for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-02 Sarah Dean , Andrew J. Taylor , Ryan K. Cosner , Benjamin Recht , Aaron D. Ames

This paper introduces a predictive control barrier function (PCBF) framework for enforcing state constraints in discrete-time systems with unknown relative degree, which can be caused by input delays or unmodeled input dynamics. Existing…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-02 Juan Augusto Paredes Salazar , James Usevitch , Ankit Goel

With the increasing emphasis on the safe autonomy for robots, model-based safe control approaches such as Control Barrier Functions have been extensively studied to ensure guaranteed safety during inter-robot interactions. In this paper, we…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Yiwei Lyu , Wenhao Luo , John M. Dolan