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To navigate complex environments, robots must increasingly use high-dimensional visual feedback (e.g. images) for control. However, relying on high-dimensional image data to make control decisions raises important questions; particularly,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Mukun Tong , Charles Dawson , Chuchu Fan

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are an effective model-based tool to formally certify the safety of a system. With the growing complexity of modern control problems, CBFs have received increasing attention in both optimization-based and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Lishuo Pan , Mattia Catellani , Thales C. Silva , Lorenzo Sabattini , Nora Ayanian

A predictive control barrier function (PCBF) based safety filter is a modular framework to verify safety of a control input by predicting a future trajectory. The approach relies on the solution of two optimization problems, first computing…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-07-25 Alexandre Didier , Robin C. Jacobs , Jerome Sieber , Kim P. Wabersich , Melanie N. Zeilinger

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated impressive performance in various areas such as video games and robotics. However, ensuring safety and stability, which are two critical properties from a control perspective, remains a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-02 Liqun Zhao , Konstantinos Gatsis , Antonis Papachristodoulou

This paper considers the safety-critical navigation problem with Signal Temporal Logic (STL) tasks. We developed an explicit reference governor-guided control barrier function (ERG-guided CBF) method that enables the application of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-10 Kaier Liang , Mingyu Cai , Cristian-Ioan Vasile

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

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a promising approach. However, success is limited to real-world applications, because ensuring safe exploration and facilitating adequate exploitation is a challenge for controlling robotic systems with…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-08-29 Mingyu Cai , Cristian-Ioan Vasile

This paper proposes a safety controller for control-affine nonlinear systems with unmodelled dynamics and disturbances to improve closed-loop robustness. Uncertainty estimation-based control barrier functions (CBFs) are utilized to ensure…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Ersin Daş , Skylar X. Wei , Joel W. Burdick

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have recently introduced a systematic tool to ensure system safety by establishing set invariance. When combined with a nominal control strategy, they form a safety-critical control mechanism. However, the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-22 Mohammad Aali , Jun Liu

This paper proposes tackling safety-critical stochastic Reinforcement Learning (RL) tasks with a sample-based, model-based approach. At the core of the method lies a Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme that acts as function approximation,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-30 Filippo Airaldi , Bart De Schutter , Azita Dabiri

It has been shown that optimizing quadratic costs while stabilizing affine control systems to desired (sets of) states subject to state and control constraints can be reduced to a sequence of Quadratic Programs (QPs) by using Control…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-17 Wei Xiao , Christos G. Cassandras , Calin A. Belta

We address the problem of optimizing the performance of a dynamic system while satisfying hard safety constraints at all times. Implementing an optimal control solution is limited by the computational cost required to derive it in real…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-08-19 Wei Xiao , Christos G. Cassandras , Calin A. Belta

Safety in reinforcement learning (RL) is a key property in both training and execution in many domains such as autonomous driving or finance. In this paper, we formalize it with a constrained RL formulation in the distributional RL setting.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Jianyi Zhang , Paul Weng

Safety-critical control is a crucial aspect of modern systems, and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have gained popularity as the framework of choice for ensuring safety. However, implementing a CBF requires exact knowledge of the true…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-26 Rahal Nanayakkara , Aaron D. Ames , Paulo Tabuada

Safe Reinforcement Learning (RL) plays an important role in applying RL algorithms to safety-critical real-world applications, addressing the trade-off between maximizing rewards and adhering to safety constraints. This work introduces a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-16 Fan Yang , Wenxuan Zhou , Zuxin Liu , Ding Zhao , David Held

Control Barrier Function (CBF) is an emerging method that guarantees safety in path planning problems by generating a control command to ensure the forward invariance of a safety set. Most of the developments up to date assume availability…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-02 Chuyuan Tao , Wenbin Wan , Junjie Gao , Bihao Mo , Hunmin Kim , Naira Hovakimyan

We propose new methods to synthesize control barrier function (CBF)-based safe controllers that avoid input saturation, which can cause safety violations. In particular, our method is created for high-dimensional, general nonlinear systems,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Simin Liu , Changliu Liu , John Dolan

Under voltage load shedding has been considered as a standard and effective measure to recover the voltage stability of the electric power grid under emergency and severe conditions. However, this scheme usually trips a massive amount of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-01 Thanh Long Vu , Sayak Mukherjee , Renke Huang , Qiuhua Hung

Construction automation increasingly requires autonomous mobile robots, yet robust autonomy remains challenging on construction sites. These environments are dynamic and often visually occluded, which complicates perception and navigation.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Johannes Mootz , Reza Akhavian

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