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Contact can be conceptualized as a set of constraints imposed on two bodies that are interacting with one another in some way. The nature of a contact, whether a point, line, or surface, dictates how these bodies are able to move with…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Andrew S. Morgan , Quentin Bateux , Mei Hao , Aaron M. Dollar

Decentralized control schemes are increasingly favored in various domains that involve multi-agent systems due to the need for computational efficiency as well as general applicability to large-scale systems. However, in the absence of an…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-05-24 Yiwei Lyu , Wenhao Luo , John M. Dolan

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…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Federico Califano

Humanoid robots are expected to operate in human-centered environments where safe and natural physical interaction is essential. However, most recent reinforcement learning (RL) policies emphasize rigid tracking and suppress external…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Qingzhou Lu , Yao Feng , Baiyu Shi , Michael Piseno , Zhenan Bao , C. Karen Liu

Safety has been of paramount importance in motion planning and control techniques and is an active area of research in the past few years. Most safety research for mobile robots target at maintaining safety with the notion of collision…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Manas Gupta , Xuesu Xiao

This article presents a closed-form adaptive controlbarrier-function (CBF) approach for satisfying state constraints in systems with parametric uncertainty. This approach uses a sampled-data recursive-least-squares algorithm to estimate the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-11-21 Ricardo Gutierrez , Jesse B. Hoagg

We propose a novel class of risk-aware control barrier functions (RA-CBFs) for the control of stochastic safety-critical systems. Leveraging a result from the stochastic level-crossing literature, we deviate from the martingale theory that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-22 Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Danil Prokhorov , Dimitra Panagou

This paper considers collision avoidance for vehicles with first-order nonholonomic constraints maintaining nonzero forward speeds, moving within dynamic environments. We leverage the concept of control barrier functions (CBFs) to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-03 Aurora Haraldsen , Martin S. Wiig , Aaron D. Ames , Kristin Y. Pettersen

We study the prescribed-time reach-avoid (PT-RA) control problem for nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics operating in environments with moving obstacles. Unlike robust or learning based Control Barrier Function (CBF) methods, the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-08 Shubham Sawarkar , Pushpak Jagtap

This paper presents a novel approach for synthesizing control barrier functions (CBFs) from high relative degree safety constraints: Rectified CBFs (ReCBFs). We begin by discussing the limitations of existing High-Order CBF approaches and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-01-06 Pio Ong , Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

Contact-rich tasks pose significant challenges for robotic systems due to inherent uncertainty, complex dynamics, and the high risk of damage during interaction. Recent advances in learning-based control have shown great potential in…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Heng Zhang , Rui Dai , Gokhan Solak , Pokuang Zhou , Yu She , Arash Ajoudani

This paper develops a control strategy for pursuit-evasion problems in environments with occlusions. We address the challenge of a mobile pursuer keeping a mobile evader within its field of view (FoV) despite line-of-sight obstructions. The…

In this work, we address the problem of ensuring real-time safety in autonomous robot navigation, in spatially constrained dynamic environments, by utilizing only onboard sensors. We present a real-time control architecture that integrates…

This paper extends control barrier functions (CBFs) to high order control barrier functions (HOCBFs) that can be used for high relative degree constraints. The proposed HOCBFs are more general than recently proposed (exponential) HOCBFs. We…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-03-15 Wei Xiao , Calin Belta

This paper considers a scenario where a robot and a human operator share the same workspace, and the robot is able to both carry out autonomous tasks and physically interact with the human in order to achieve common goals. In this context,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Martina Lippi , Giuseppe Gillini , Alessandro Marino , Filippo Arrichiello

Control barrier functions have been demonstrated to be a useful method of ensuring constraint satisfaction for a wide class of controllers, however existing results are mostly restricted to continuous time systems of relative degree one.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-03-26 Wenceslao Shaw Cortez , Denny Oetomo , Chris Manzie , Peter Choong

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a powerful tool in the design of safety-critical controllers for nonlinear systems. In modern applications, complex systems often involve the feedback interconnection of subsystems evolving…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-03 Stefano Di Gregorio , Guido Carnevale , Giuseppe Notarstefano

Reinforcement learning (RL), while powerful and expressive, can often prioritize performance at the expense of safety. Yet safety violations can lead to catastrophic outcomes in real-world deployments. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) offer…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Lizhi Yang , Blake Werner , Massimiliano de Sa , Aaron D. Ames

Safety stands as the primary obstacle preventing the widespread adoption of learning-based robotic systems in our daily lives. While reinforcement learning (RL) shows promise as an effective robot learning paradigm, conventional RL…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Maeva Guerrier , Karthik Soma , Hassan Fouad , Giovanni Beltrame

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Shuo Liu , Zhe Huang , Calin A. Belta