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Robots deployed in unstructured, real-world environments operate under considerable uncertainty due to imperfect state estimates, model error, and disturbances. Given this real-world context, the goal of this paper is to develop controllers…
Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to endow systems with properties of stability and safety, and have been deployed successfully in multiple domains. Despite this success, model uncertainty remains a significant challenge in synthesizing…
Robots operating in real world settings must navigate and maintain safety while interacting with many heterogeneous agents and obstacles. Multi-Agent Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have emerged as a computationally efficient tool to…
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…
Safe path planning is critical for bipedal robots to operate in safety-critical environments. Common path planning algorithms, such as RRT or RRT*, typically use geometric or kinematic collision check algorithms to ensure collision-free…
We present a novel method for designing higher-order Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) that guarantee convergence to a safe set within a user-specified finite. Traditional Higher Order CBFs (HOCBFs) ensure asymptotic safety but lack…
Ensuring safety for autonomous robots operating in dynamic environments can be challenging due to factors such as unmodeled dynamics, noisy sensor measurements, and partial observability. To account for these limitations, it is common to…
In this paper, we propose a new class of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) that help avoid collisions with kinematic (non-zero velocity) obstacles. While the current forms of CBFs have been successful in…
This paper presents a time-varying soft-maximum composite control barrier function (CBF) that can be used to ensure safety in an a priori unknown environment, where local perception information regarding the safe set is periodically…
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…
Set invariance techniques such as control barrier functions (CBFs) can be used to enforce time-varying constraints such as keeping a safe distance from dynamic objects. However, existing methods for enforcing time-varying constraints often…
In this paper, we consider a way to safely navigate the robots in unknown environments using measurement data from sensory devices. The control barrier function (CBF) is one of the promising approaches to encode safety requirements of the…
Safety filters leveraging control barrier functions (CBFs) are highly effective for enforcing safe behavior on complex systems. It is often easier to synthesize CBFs for a Reduced order Model (RoM), and track the resulting safe behavior on…
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…
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…
Safety is a fundamental requirement of many robotic systems. Control barrier function (CBF)-based approaches have been proposed to guarantee the safety of robotic systems. However, the effectiveness of these approaches highly relies on the…
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…
Safety is of great importance in multi-robot navigation problems. In this paper, we propose a control barrier function (CBF) based optimizer that ensures robot safety with both high probability and flexibility, using only sensor…
Robot motion planning is central to real-world autonomous applications, such as self-driving cars, persistence surveillance, and robotic arm manipulation. One challenge in motion planning is generating control signals for nonlinear systems…
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…