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Control barrier functions (CBFs) have become a popular tool to enforce safety of a control system. CBFs are commonly utilized in a quadratic program formulation (CBF-QP) as safety-critical constraints. A class $\mathcal{K}$ function in CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-12 Hengbo Ma , Bike Zhang , Masayoshi Tomizuka , Koushil Sreenath

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

This work applies universal adaptive control to control barrier functions to achieve forward invariance of a safe set despite the presence of unmatched parametric uncertainties. The approach combines two ideas. The first is to construct a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-08-17 Brett T. Lopez , Jean-Jacques Slotine

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a powerful tool for enforcing safety constraints in control systems, but their direct application to complex, high-dimensional dynamics is often challenging. In many settings, safety certificates are…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Nikolaos Bousias , Charalampia Stamouli , Anastasios Tsiamis , George Pappas

This paper presents a novel approach for ensuring safe operation of systems subject to input nonlinearities and time-varying safety constraints. We extend the time-varying barrier function framework to address time-varying safety…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-01 Felix Biertümpfel , Jungbae Chun , Peter Seiler

This paper presents a framework for designing provably safe feedback controllers for sampled-data control affine systems with measurement and actuation uncertainties. Based on the interval Taylor model of nonlinear functions, a sampled-data…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-13 Yuhao Zhang , Sequoyah Walters , Xiangru Xu

In this paper we seek to quantify the ability of learning to improve safety guarantees endowed by Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). In particular, we investigate how model uncertainty in the time derivative of a CBF can be reduced via…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-20 Andrew J. Taylor , Andrew Singletary , Yisong Yue , Aaron D. Ames

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

Barrier functions (also called certificates) have been an important tool for the verification of hybrid systems, and have also played important roles in optimization and multi-objective control. The extension of a barrier function to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-12-07 Xiangru Xu , Paulo Tabuada , Jessy W. Grizzle , Aaron D. Ames

The control barrier function (CBF) has become a fundamental tool in safety-critical systems design since its invention. Typically, the quadratic optimization framework is employed to accommodate CBFs, control Lyapunov functions (CLFs),…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-17 Junjun Xie , Liang Hu , Jiahu Qin , Jun Yang , Huijun Gao

This paper proposes a safety-critical control design approach for nonlinear control affine systems in the presence of matched and unmatched uncertainties. Our constructive framework couples control barrier function (CBF) theory with a new…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-02-03 Ersin Das , Joel W. Burdick

We study a control architecture for nonlinear constrained systems that integrates a performance-boosting (PB) controller with a scheduled Predictive Safety Filter (PSF). The PSF acts as a pre-stabilizing base controller that enforces state…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-23 Danilo Saccani , Haoming Shen , Luca Furieri , Giancarlo Ferrari-Trecate

Safety is a fundamental requirement of control systems. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are proposed to ensure the safety of the control system by constructing safety filters or synthesizing control inputs. However, the safety guarantee…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-29 Manan Tayal , Hongchao Zhang , Pushpak Jagtap , Andrew Clark , Shishir Kolathaya

In this paper, we study Stochastic Control Barrier Functions (SCBFs) to enable the design of probabilistic safe real-time controllers in presence of uncertainties and based on noisy measurements. Our goal is to design controllers that bound…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-03 Shakiba Yaghoubi , Georgios Fainekos , Tomoya Yamaguchi , Danil Prokhorov , Bardh Hoxha

This paper studies the problem of safe stabilization of control-affine systems under uncertainty. Our starting point is the availability of worst-case or probabilistic error descriptions for the dynamics and a control barrier function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-05 Pol Mestres , Jorge Cortés

This paper generalizes the control barrier function framework by replacing scalar-valued functions with matrix-valued ones. Specifically, we develop barrier conditions for safe sets defined by matrix inequalities -- both semidefinite and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-01 Pio Ong , Yicheng Xu , Ryan M. Bena , Faryar Jabbari , Aaron D. Ames

Guaranteeing the safety of controllers is vital for real-world applications, but is markedly difficult when the states are not perfectly known and when the control inputs are bounded. Backup control barrier functions (bCBFs) use predictions…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-23 David E. J. van Wijk , Tamas G. Molnar , Samuel Coogan , Manoranjan Majji , Aaron D. Ames , Joel W. Burdick

Safety is of paramount importance in control systems to avoid costly risks and catastrophic damages. The control barrier function (CBF) method, a promising solution for safety-critical control, poses a new challenge of enhancing control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-26 Shengbo Wang , Ke Li , Zheng Yan , Zhenyuan Guo , Song Zhu , Guanghui Wen , Shiping Wen

This paper proposes a safety-critical controller for dynamic and uncertain environments, leveraging a robust environment control barrier function (ECBF) to enhance the robustness against the measurement and prediction uncertainties…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-21 Ying Shuai Quan , Jian Zhou , Erik Frisk , Chung Choo Chung

Ensuring safe exploration in high-dimensional systems with unknown dynamics remains a significant challenge. Existing safe reinforcement learning methods often provide safety guarantees only in expectation, which can still lead to safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rahul Narava , Siddharth Verma , Ojas Jain , Shashi Shekhar Jha , Mayank Shekhar Jha