English
Related papers

Related papers: Composition of Control Barrier Functions With Diff…

200 papers

In robotics, control barrier function (CBF)-based safety filters are commonly used to enforce state constraints. A critical challenge arises when the relative degree of the CBF varies across the state space. This variability can create…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-09 Lukas Brunke , Siqi Zhou , Francesco D'Orazio , Angela P. Schoellig

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are a practical approach for designing safety-critical controllers, but constructing them for arbitrary nonlinear dynamical systems remains a challenge. Recent efforts have explored learning-based methods,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-20 Manan Tayal , Aditya Singh , Pushpak Jagtap , Shishir Kolathaya

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

This paper takes a step towards addressing the difficulty of constructing Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for parallel safety boundaries. A single CBF for both boundaries has been reported to be difficult to validate for safety, and we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Kwang Hak Kim , Mamadou Diagne , Miroslav Krstić

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

Using control barrier functions (CBFs) as safety filters provides a computationally inexpensive yet effective method for constructing controllers in safety-critical applications. However, using CBFs requires the construction of a valid CBF,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Bolun Dai , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

Complex control systems are often described in a layered fashion, represented as higher-order systems where the inputs appear after a chain of integrators. While Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have proven to be powerful tools for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-05 Andrew J. Taylor , Pio Ong , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

We present a closed-form optimal feedback control method that ensures safety in an a prior unknown and potentially dynamic environment. This article considers the scenario where local perception data (e.g., LiDAR) is obtained periodically,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-04-23 Amirsaeid Safari , Jesse B. Hoagg

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

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

Control barrier functions guarantee safety but typically require accurate system models. Parametric uncertainty invalidates these guarantees. Existing robust methods maintain safety via worst-case bounds, limiting performance, while modular…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-27 Mohammadreza Kamaldar

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

Ensuring the safety of control systems often requires the satisfaction of constraints on states (such as position or velocity), control inputs (such as force), and a mixture of states and inputs (such as power that depends on both velocity…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-19 Laszlo Gacsi , Adam K. Kiss , Ersin Das , Tamas G. Molnar

Learning-based control with safety guarantees usually requires real-time safety certification and modifications of possibly unsafe learning-based policies. The control barrier function (CBF) method uses a safety filter containing a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-10-25 Kanghui He , Shengling Shi , Ton van den Boom , Bart De Schutter

Control barrier functions (CBF) have become popular as a safety filter to guarantee the safety of nonlinear dynamical systems for arbitrary inputs. However, it is difficult to construct functions that satisfy the CBF constraints for high…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-06 Oswin So , Zachary Serlin , Makai Mann , Jake Gonzales , Kwesi Rutledge , Nicholas Roy , Chuchu Fan

Robust control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled mechanism for smooth safety enforcement under worst-case disturbances. However, existing approaches typically rely on explicit, closed-form structure in the dynamics (e.g.,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-16 Donggeon David Oh , Duy P. Nguyen , Haimin Hu , Jaime Fernández Fisac

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) offer a framework for ensuring set invariance and designing constrained control laws. However, crafting a valid CBF relies on system-specific assumptions and the availability of an accurate system model,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-14 Mohammad Bajelani , Klaske van Heusden

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

In a complex real-time operating environment, external disturbances and uncertainties adversely affect the safety, stability, and performance of dynamical systems. This paper presents a robust stabilizing safety-critical controller…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-29 Ersin Daş , Richard M. Murray

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,…