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This paper considers the general problem of transitioning theoretically safe controllers to hardware. Concretely, we explore the application of control barrier functions (CBFs) to sampled-data systems: systems that evolve continuously but…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-14 Andrew Singletary , Yuxiao Chen , Aaron D. Ames

As autonomous systems become increasingly prevalent in daily life, ensuring their safety is paramount. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as an effective tool for guaranteeing safety; however, manually designing them for specific…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Shreenabh Agrawal , Manan Tayal , Aditya Singh , Shishir Kolathaya

Control barrier functions (CBFs) offer a powerful tool for enforcing safety specifications in control synthesis. This paper deals with the problem of constructing valid CBFs. Given a second-order system and any desired safety set with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-17 Mohammed Alyaseen , Nikolay Atanasov , Jorge Cortes

Optimal control for safety-critical systems is often dependent on the conservativeness of constraints. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) serve as a medium to represent such constraints, but constructing a minimally conservative CBF is a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-08 Tanmay Dokania , Yashwanth Kumar Nakka

Verifying the safety of controllers is critical for many applications, but is especially challenging for systems with bounded inputs. Backup control barrier functions (bCBFs) offer a structured approach to synthesizing safe controllers that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-08 David E. J. van Wijk , Ersin Das , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames , Joel W. Burdick

Control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) and control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used tools for synthesizing controllers subject to stability and safety constraints. Paired with online optimization, they provide stabilizing control actions…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Hongkai Dai , Frank Permenter

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have proven to be an effective tool for performing safe control synthesis for nonlinear systems. However, guaranteeing safety in the presence of disturbances and input constraints for high relative degree…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-21 Luzia Knoedler , Oswin So , Ji Yin , Mitchell Black , Zachary Serlin , Panagiotis Tsiotras , Javier Alonso-Mora , Chuchu Fan

Ensuring liveness and safety of autonomous and cyber-physical systems remains a fundamental challenge, particularly when multiple safety constraints are present. This letter advances the theoretical foundations of safety-filter Quadratic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-24 Matheus F. Reis , José P. Carvalho , A. Pedro Aguiar

This paper presents a control design method that achieves safety for systems with unmodeled dynamics at the plant input. The proposed method combines control barrier functions (CBFs) and integral quadratic constraints (IQCs). Simplified,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-05 Peter Seiler , Mrdjan Jankovic , Erik Hellstrom

We study the problem of co-designing control barrier functions (CBF) and linear state feedback controllers for continuous-time linear systems. We achieve this by means of a single semi-definite optimization program. Our formulation can…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-19 Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Antonis Papachristodoulou , Claudio De Persis

This paper studies control synthesis for a general class of nonlinear, control-affine dynamical systems under additive disturbances and state-estimation errors. We enforce forward invariance of static and dynamic safe sets and convergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-14 Kunal Garg , Dimitra Panagou

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled framework for enforcing safety in control systems -- yet the certified safe operating region in practice is often conservative, especially under input bounds. In many applications,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Pio Ong , David E. J. van Wijk , Massimiliano de Sa , Joel W. Burdick , 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

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 barrier functions (CBFs) recently introduced a systematic way to guarantee the system's safety through set invariance. Together with a nominal control method, it establishes a safety-critical control mechanism. The resulting safety…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-09-13 Mohammad Aali , Jun Liu

This article introduces the Pareto Control Barrier Function (PCBF) algorithm to maximize the inner safe set of dynamical systems under input constraints. Traditional Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) ensure safety by maintaining system…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-21 Xiaoyang Cao , Zhe Fu , Alexandre M. Bayen

Control systems operating in the real world face countless sources of unpredictable uncertainties. These random disturbances can render deterministic guarantees inapplicable and cause catastrophic safety failures. To overcome this, this…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-10 Pol Mestres , Blake Werner , Ryan K. Cosner , Aaron D. Ames

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are an effective methodology to ensure safety and performative efficacy in real-time control applications such as power systems, resource allocation, autonomous vehicles, robotics, etc. This approach ensures…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-30 Samy Wu Fung , Levon Nurbekyan

This letter addresses the constraint compatibility problem of control barrier functions (CBFs), which occurs when a safety-critical CBF requires a system to apply more control effort than it is capable of generating. This inevitably leads…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-28 Logan E. Beaver

The agents within a multi-agent system (MAS) operating in marine environments often need to utilize task payloads and avoid collisions in coordination, necessitating adherence to a set of relative-pose constraints, which may include…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-22 Yujia Yang , Chris Manzie , Ye Pu