Related papers: Passivity-Preserving Safety-Critical Control using…
The optimal performance of robotic systems is usually achieved near the limit of state and input bounds. Model predictive control (MPC) is a prevalent strategy to handle these operational constraints, however, safety still remains an open…
Task-space Passivity-Based Control (PBC) for manipulation has numerous appealing properties, including robustness to modeling error and safety for human-robot interaction. Existing methods perform poorly in singular configurations, however,…
This paper presents extensions of control barrier function (CBF) theory to systems with disturbances wherein a controller only receives measurements infrequently and operates open-loop between measurements, while still satisfying state…
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…
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…
Control barrier function (CBF)-QP safety filters enforce safety by minimally modifying a nominal controller. While prior work has mainly addressed robustness of safety under uncertainty, robustness of the resulting closed-loop…
Hybrid dynamical systems are ubiquitous as practical robotic applications often involve both continuous states and discrete switchings. Safety is a primary concern for hybrid robotic systems. Existing safety-critical control approaches for…
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…
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,…
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…
Control barrier functions (CBFs) offer an efficient framework for designing real-time safe controllers. However, CBF-based controllers can be short-sighted, resulting in poor performance, a behaviour which is aggravated in uncertain…
In this paper, we study the relationship between systems controlled via Control Barrier Function (CBF) approaches and a class of discontinuous dynamical systems, called Projected Dynamical Systems (PDSs). In particular, under appropriate…
We present a closed-form optimal control that satisfies both safety constraints (i.e., state constraints) and input constraints (e.g., actuator limits) using a composition of multiple control barrier functions (CBFs). This main contribution…
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…
In this paper, we establish a connection between model predictive control (MPC) techniques and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). Recognizing the similarity between CBFs and Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs), we propose a MPC formulation…
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…
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…
Learning-based controllers, such as neural network (NN) controllers, can show high empirical performance but lack formal safety guarantees. To address this issue, control barrier functions (CBFs) have been applied as a safety filter to…
This tutorial paper presents recent work of the authors that extends the theory of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to address practical challenges in the synthesis of safe controllers for autonomous systems and robots. We present novel…
A common assumption on the deployment of safeguarding controllers on the digital platform is that high sampling frequency translates to a small violation of safety. This paper investigates and formalizes this assumption through the lens of…