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Related papers: Safe Backstepping with Control Barrier Functions

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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

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have recently been introduced as a systematic tool to ensure safety by establishing set invariance. When combined with a control Lyapunov function (CLF), they form a safety-critical control mechanism.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-22 Mohammad Aali , Jun Liu

This paper introduces integral control barrier functions (I-CBFs) as a means to enable the safety-critical integral control of nonlinear systems. Importantly, I-CBFs allow for the holistic encoding of both state constraints and input bounds…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-09 Aaron D. Ames , Gennaro Notomista , Yorai Wardi , Magnus Egerstedt

This paper presents a methodology for ensuring that the composition of multiple Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) always leads to feasible conditions on the control input, even in the presence of input constraints. In the case of a system…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-24 Joseph Breeden , 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 this paper, we consider the problem of safe control synthesis of general controlled nonlinear systems in the presence of bounded additive disturbances. Towards this aim, we first construct a governing augmented state space model…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-02 Vrushabh Zinage , Rohan Chandra , Efstathios Bakolas

Designing control inputs that satisfy safety requirements is crucial in safety-critical nonlinear control, and this task becomes particularly challenging when full-state measurements are unavailable. In this work, we address the problem of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-15 Shiqing Wei , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

The safety-critical control of robotic systems often must account for multiple, potentially conflicting, safety constraints. This paper proposes novel relaxation techniques to address safety-critical control problems in the presence of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Jaemin Lee , Jeeseop Kim , Aaron D. Ames

In safety-critical control systems, ensuring both system safety and smooth control input is essential for practical deployment. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) frameworks, especially High-Order CBFs (HOCBFs), effectively enforce…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-11 Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta

Safety is a critical property for control systems in medicine, transportation, manufacturing, and other applications, and can be defined as ensuring positive invariance of a predefined safe set. This paper investigates the problems of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-11-12 Andrew Clark

Safety in dynamical systems is commonly pursued using control barrier functions (CBFs) which enforce safety-constraints over the entire duration of a system's evolution. We propose a prescribed-time safety (PTSf) design which enforces…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Imoleayo Abel , Drew Steeves , Miroslav Krstic , Mrdjan Jankovic

Physical human-robot interaction offers the potential to leverage human intelligence and robot physical capabilities to enable a range of exciting applications, e.g., collaborative robots for rehabilitation. Safety is critical for the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rui Luo , Jonas Mariager Jakobsen , Wesley Roozing , Federico Califano , Cheng Fang

We propose a novel approach to certify closed-loop stability and safety of a constrained polynomial system based on the combination of Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). For polynomial systems that are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-03 Michael Schneeberger , Florian Dörfler , Silvia Mastellone

This paper considers the safety-critical control design problem with output measurements. An observer-based safety control framework that integrates the estimation error quantified observer and the control barrier function (CBF) approach is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-24 Yujie Wang , Xiangru Xu

In this paper, the issue of model uncertainty in safety-critical control is addressed with a data-driven approach. For this purpose, we utilize the structure of an input-ouput linearization controller based on a nominal model along with a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-06-05 Jason Choi , Fernando Castañeda , Claire J. Tomlin , Koushil Sreenath

Correct-by-construction techniques, such as control barrier functions (CBFs), can be used to guarantee closed-loop safety by acting as a supervisor of an existing or legacy controller. However, supervisory-control intervention typically…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-05-03 Yuxiao Chen , Ayonga Hereid , Huei Peng , Jessy Grizzle

We propose a novel cooperative herding strategy through backstepping control barrier functions (CBFs), which coordinates multiple herders to herd a group of evaders safely towards a designated goal region. For the herding system with…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Kang Li , Ming Li , Wenkang Ji , Zhiyong Sun , Shiyu Zhao

This paper introduces harmonic control Lyapunov barrier functions (harmonic CLBF) that aid in constrained control problems such as reach-avoid problems. Harmonic CLBFs exploit the maximum principle that harmonic functions satisfy to encode…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-27 Amartya Mukherjee , Ruikun Zhou , Haocheng Chang , Jun Liu

We consider the problem of designing controllers to guarantee safety in a class of nonlinear systems under uncertainties in the system dynamics and/or the environment. We define a class of uncertain control barrier functions (CBFs), and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-09-20 Vipul K. Sharma , S. Sivaranjani

Guaranteeing the safety of nonlinear systems with bounded inputs remains a key challenge in safe autonomy. Backup control barrier functions (bCBFs) provide a powerful mechanism for constructing controlled invariant sets by propagating…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-20 David E. J. van Wijk , Dohyun Lee , Ersin Das , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames , Joel W. Burdick