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When we rely on deep-learned models for robotic perception, we must recognize that these models may behave unreliably on inputs dissimilar from the training data, compromising the closed-loop system's safety. This raises fundamental…
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,…
An outstanding challenge for the widespread deployment of robotic systems like autonomous vehicles is ensuring safe interaction with humans without sacrificing performance. Existing safety methods often neglect the robot's ability to learn…
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…
Autonomous navigation through unstructured and dynamically-changing environments is a complex task that continues to present many challenges for modern roboticists. In particular, legged robots typically possess manipulable asymmetric…
Ensuring safe interactions in human-centric environments requires robots to understand and adhere to constraints recognized by humans as "common sense" (e.g., "moving a cup of water above a laptop is unsafe as the water may spill" or…
We introduce a novel method for mobile robot navigation in dynamic, unknown environments, leveraging onboard sensing and distributionally robust optimization to impose probabilistic safety constraints. Our method introduces a…
Obstacle avoidance is central to safe navigation, especially for robots with arbitrary and nonconvex geometries operating in cluttered environments. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) approaches often rely on analytic clearance…
Many robotic tasks require high-dimensional sensors such as cameras and Lidar to navigate complex environments, but developing certifiably safe feedback controllers around these sensors remains a challenging open problem, particularly when…
Safe navigation in real-time is an essential task for humanoid robots in real-world deployment. Since humanoid robots are inherently underactuated thanks to unilateral ground contacts, a path is considered safe if it is obstacle-free and…
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…
Safety-critical motion planning in mixed traffic remains challenging for autonomous vehicles, especially when it involves interactions between the ego vehicle (EV) and surrounding vehicles (SVs). In dense traffic, the feasibility of a lane…
Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as efficient tools to address the safe navigation problem for robot applications. However, synthesizing informative and obstacle motion-aware CBFs online using real-time sensor data remains…
Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have become powerful tools for ensuring safety in nonlinear systems. However, finding valid CBFs that guarantee persistent safety and feasibility remains an open challenge, especially in systems with input…
Adaptive control provides closed-loop stability and reference tracking for uncertain dynamical systems through online parameter adaptation. These properties alone, however, do not ensure safety in the sense of forward invariance of state…
Safe control in dynamic traffic environments remains a major challenge for autonomous vehicles (AVs), as ego vehicle and obstacle states are inherently affected by sensing noise and estimation uncertainty. However, existing studies have not…
A trust-aware safe control system for autonomous navigation in the presence of humans, specifically pedestrians, is presented. The system combines model predictive control (MPC) with control barrier functions (CBFs) and trust estimation to…
In this letter we propose a holistic analysis merging the techniques of passivity-based control (PBC) and control barrier functions (CBF). We constructively find conditions under which passivity of the closed-loop system is preserved under…
Safe control in unknown environments is a significant challenge in robotics. While Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are widely used to guarantee system safety, they often assume known environments with predefined obstacles. The proposed…
Autonomous navigation in complex, non-convex environments remains challenging when robot dynamics, control limits, and exact robot geometry must all be taken into account. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical planning and control…