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Control barrier functions (CBFs) are a popular approach to design feedback laws that achieve safety guarantees for nonlinear systems. The CBF-based controller design relies on the availability of a model to select feasible inputs from the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-17 Lukas Lanza , Johannes Köhler , Dario Dennstädt , Thomas Berger , Karl Worthmann

Complex control systems are often described in a layered fashion, represented as higher-order systems where the inputs appear after a chain of integrators. While Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have proven to be powerful tools for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-05 Andrew J. Taylor , Pio Ong , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

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 (CBF) have provided a very versatile framework for the synthesis of safe control architectures for a wide class of nonlinear dynamical systems. Typically, CBF-based synthesis approaches apply to systems that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Shuo Yang , Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Hideki Okamoto , Rahul Mangharam

This letter presents a closed-form solution of Control Barrier Function (CBF) framework for enforcing safety constraints on a Stewart robotic platform. The proposed method simultaneously handles multiple position and velocity constraints…

Balancing safety and performance is one of the predominant challenges in modern control system design. Moreover, it is crucial to robustly ensure safety without inducing unnecessary conservativeness that degrades performance. In this work…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Anil Alan , Andrew J. Taylor , Chaozhe R. He , Aaron D. Ames , Gabor Orosz

In this paper, we present a novel theoretical framework for online adaptation of Control Barrier Function (CBF) parameters, i.e., of the class K functions included in the CBF condition, under input constraints. We introduce the concept of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Taekyung Kim , Randal W. Beard , Dimitra Panagou

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) provide a powerful framework for ensuring safety in dynamical systems. However, their application typically relies on full state information, which is often violated in real-world due to the availability of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-19 Vaishnavi Jagabathula , Ahan Basu , Pushpak Jagtap

In robotics, control barrier function (CBF)-based safety filters are commonly used to enforce state constraints. A critical challenge arises when the relative degree of the CBF varies across the state space. This variability can create…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-09 Lukas Brunke , Siqi Zhou , Francesco D'Orazio , Angela P. Schoellig

Obtaining control barrier functions (CBFs) with large safe sets for complex nonlinear systems and constraints is a challenging task. Predictive CBFs address this issue by using an online finite-horizon optimal control problem that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-27 Kanghui He , Anil Alan , Shengling Shi , Ton van den Boom , Bart De Schutter

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have recently become a powerful method for rendering desired safe sets forward invariant in single- and multi-agent systems. In the multi-agent case, prior literature has considered scenarios where all…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-10 James Usevitch , Dimitra Panagou

This contribution introduces a centralized input constrained optimal control framework based on multiple control barrier functions (CBFs) to coordinate connected and automated agents at intersections. For collision avoidance, we propose a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-12 Alexander Katriniok

We propose new methods to synthesize control barrier function (CBF)-based safe controllers that avoid input saturation, which can cause safety violations. In particular, our method is created for high-dimensional, general nonlinear systems,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Simin Liu , Changliu Liu , John Dolan

Optimal control methods provide solutions to safety-critical problems but easily become intractable. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a popular technique that facilitates their solution by provably guaranteeing safety,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-02-21 Ehsan Sabouni , H. M. Sabbir Ahmad , Vittorio Giammarino , Christos G. Cassandras , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis , Wenchao Li

Safety-critical whole-body robot control demands reactive methods that ensure collision avoidance in real-time. Complementarity constraints and control barrier functions (CBF) have emerged as core tools for ensuring such safety constraints,…

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

In this work, we propose a cascaded scheme of linear Model prediction Control (MPC) based on Control Barrier Functions (CBF) with Dynamic Feedback Linearization (DFL) for Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-16 Ali Mohamed Ali , Hashim A. Hashim , Chao Shen

This letter presents a new notion of input-to-state safe control barrier functions (ISSf-CBFs), which ensure safety of nonlinear dynamical systems under input disturbances. Similar to how safety conditions are specified in terms of forward…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-08-14 Shishir Kolathaya , Aaron D. Ames

Time delays in feedback control loops can cause controllers to respond too late, and with excessively large corrective actions, leading to unsafe behavior (violation of state constraints) and controller infeasibility (violation of input…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-26 Adam K. Kiss , Ersin Das , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

In this paper, we investigate safety-critical control problem of discrete-time stochastic systems with incomplete information, where safety constraints must be enforced using state estimates obtained from noisy measurements. We develop an…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-15 Jianing Zhao , Zhuoting Cai , Xiang Yin