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This paper addresses the synthesis of safety-critical controllers using estimate feedback. We propose an observer-controller interconnection to ensure that the nonlinear system remains safe despite bounded disturbances on the system…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Devansh R. Agrawal , Dimitra Panagou

This paper investigates the control barrier function (CBF) based safety-critical control for continuous nonlinear control affine systems using the more efficient online algorithms through time-varying optimization. The idea lies in that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-03-21 Shengbo Wang , Shiping Wen , Yin Yang , Yuting Cao , Kaibo Shi , Tingwen Huang

The problem of control based on vision measurements (bearings) has been amply studied in the literature; however, the problem of addressing the limits of the field of view of physical sensors has received relatively less attention…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-25 Biagio Trimarchi , Fabrizio Schiano , Roberto Tron

This paper studies the efficient implementation of safety filters that are designed using control barrier functions (CBFs), which minimally modify a nominal controller to render it safe with respect to a prescribed set of states. Although…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-23 Pol Mestres , Shima Sadat Mousavi , Pio Ong , Lizhi Yang , Ersin Das , Joel W. Burdick , Aaron D. Ames

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

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

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

Modern autonomous systems, such as flying, legged, and wheeled robots, are generally characterized by high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, which presents challenges for model-based safety-critical control design. Motivated by the success of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-21 Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

This letter presents a nonlinear disturbance observer-parameterized control barrier function (DOp-CBF) designed for a robust safety control system under external disturbances. This framework emphasizes that the safety bounds are relevant to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-03 Ziqi Yang , Lihua Xie

The increasing complexity of modern robotic systems and the environments they operate in necessitates the formal consideration of safety in the presence of imperfect measurements. In this paper we propose a rigorous framework for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-04-30 Ryan K. Cosner , Andrew W. Singletary , Andrew J. Taylor , Tamas G. Molnar , Katherine L. Bouman , Aaron D. Ames

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

Safety critical systems involve the tight coupling between potentially conflicting control objectives and safety constraints. As a means of creating a formal framework for controlling systems of this form, and with a view toward automotive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Aaron D. Ames , Xiangru Xu , Jessy W. Grizzle , Paulo Tabuada

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for safety-critical controller design for nonlinear systems. Existing design paradigms do not address the gap between theory (controller design with continuous…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-15 Andrew J. Taylor , Victor D. Dorobantu , Ryan K. Cosner , Yisong Yue , Aaron D. Ames

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

Learning-based control with safety guarantees usually requires real-time safety certification and modifications of possibly unsafe learning-based policies. The control barrier function (CBF) method uses a safety filter containing a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-10-25 Kanghui He , Shengling Shi , Ton van den Boom , Bart De Schutter

Control barrier functions guarantee safety but typically require accurate system models. Parametric uncertainty invalidates these guarantees. Existing robust methods maintain safety via worst-case bounds, limiting performance, while modular…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-27 Mohammadreza Kamaldar

This work provides formal safety guarantees for control systems with disturbance. A disturbance observer-based robust safety-critical controller is proposed, that estimates the effect of the disturbance on safety and utilizes this estimate…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-05 Anil Alan , Tamas G. Molnar , Ersin Das , Aaron D. Ames , Gabor Orosz

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been widely applied to safety-critical robotic applications. However, the construction of control barrier functions for robotic systems remains a challenging task. Recently, collision detection using…

We propose integrating an approximation of a predictive control barrier function (PCBF) in a safety filter framework, resulting in a prediction horizon independent formulation. The PCBF is defined through the value function of an optimal…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-26 Alexandre Didier , Melanie N. Zeilinger

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are a powerful tool for the constrained control of nonlinear systems; however, the majority of results in the literature focus on systems subject to a single CBF constraint, making it challenging to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-05 Max H. Cohen , Eugene Lavretsky , Aaron D. Ames