English
Related papers

Related papers: Optimal control barrier functions for RL based saf…

200 papers

Constrained reinforcement learning (CRL) has gained significant interest recently, since safety constraints satisfaction is critical for real-world problems. However, existing CRL methods constraining discounted cumulative costs generally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-08 Dongjie Yu , Haitong Ma , Shengbo Eben Li , Jianyu Chen

A central question in robotics is how to design a control system for an agile mobile robot. This paper studies this question systematically, focusing on a challenging setting: autonomous drone racing. We show that a neural network…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-10-19 Yunlong Song , Angel Romero , Matthias Mueller , Vladlen Koltun , Davide Scaramuzza

This paper presents a new approach for guaranteed safety subject to input constraints (e.g., actuator limits) using a composition of multiple control barrier functions (CBFs). First, we present a method for constructing a single CBF from…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-10 Pedram Rabiee , Jesse B. Hoagg

Reinforcement learning (RL) enables agents to learn optimal behaviors through interaction with their environment and has been increasingly deployed in safety-critical applications, including autonomous driving. Despite its promise, RL is…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has recently impressed the world with stunning results in various applications. While the potential of RL is now well-established, many critical aspects still need to be tackled, including safety and stability…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-23 Mario Zanon , Sébastien Gros

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful data-driven control method that has been largely explored in autonomous driving tasks. However, conventional RL approaches learn control policies through trial-and-error interactions with the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-11-03 Tianyu Shi , Dong Chen , Kaian Chen , Zhaojian Li

We propose a computationally efficient approach to safe reinforcement learning (RL) for frequency regulation in power systems with high levels of variable renewable energy resources. The approach draws on set-theoretic control techniques to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-03-24 Daniel Tabas , Baosen Zhang

Autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance remain a core challenge of modern Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). While traditional control methods struggle with the complexity and variability of the environment, reinforcement learning (RL)…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-05 Ashik Abrar Naeem , Mohammad Ariful Haque

This paper presents a safety-critical approach to the coordinated control of cooperative robots locomoting in the presence of fixed (holonomic) constraints. To this end, we leverage control barrier functions (CBFs) to ensure the safe…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-15 Jeeseop Kim , Jaemin Lee , Aaron D. Ames

Safety filters based on Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a practical tool for the safety-critical control of autonomous systems. These approaches encode safety through a value function and enforce safety by imposing a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-08-23 Sander Tonkens , Sylvia Herbert

Control barrier functions (CBFs) play a critical role in the design of safe optimization-based controllers for control-affine systems. Given a CBF associated with a desired ``safe'' set, the typical approach consists in embedding CBF-based…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-12 Yiting Chen , Pol Mestres , Jorge Cortes , Emiliano Dall'Anese

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can achieve state-of-the-art performance in decision-making and continuous control tasks. However, applying RL algorithms on safety-critical systems still needs to be well justified due to the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Mahmoud Selim , Amr Alanwar , M. Watheq El-Kharashi , Hazem M. Abbas , Karl H. Johansson

This paper presents a safety-critical approach to the coordination of robots in dynamic environments. To this end, we leverage control barrier functions (CBFs) with the forward reachable set to guarantee the safe coordination of the robots…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-15 Jeeseop Kim , Jaemin Lee , Aaron D. Ames

Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have been recently utilized in the design of provably safe feedback control laws for nonlinear systems. These feedback control methods typically compute the next control input by solving an online Quadratic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-23 Shakiba Yaghoubi , Georgios Fainekos , Sriram Sankaranarayanan

Industrial control applications require high performance under strict constraints. Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide principled safety mechanisms, but constructing CBF-based safety filters for large-scale systems is challenging. We…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-09 Kim P. Wabersich , Felix Berkel , Felix Gruber , Sven Reimann

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been recognized as a powerful tool for robot control tasks. RL typically employs reward functions to define task objectives and guide agent learning. However, since the reward function serves the dual purpose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Zhao Yu , Xiuping Wu , Liangjun Ke

We study the problem of co-designing control barrier functions (CBF) and linear state feedback controllers for continuous-time linear systems. We achieve this by means of a single semi-definite optimization program. Our formulation can…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-19 Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Antonis Papachristodoulou , Claudio De Persis

This paper proposes a safety-critical control design approach for nonlinear control affine systems in the presence of matched and unmatched uncertainties. Our constructive framework couples control barrier function (CBF) theory with a new…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-02-03 Ersin Das , Joel W. Burdick

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been widely applied to many control tasks and substantially improved the performances compared to conventional control methods in many domains where the reward function is well defined. However, for many…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-22 Baohe Zhang , Yuan Zhang , Lilli Frison , Thomas Brox , Joschka Bödecker

Safety critical systems involve the tight coupling between potentially conflicting control objectives and safety constraints. As a means of creating a formal framework for controlling systems of this form, and with a view toward automotive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Aaron D. Ames , Xiangru Xu , Jessy W. Grizzle , Paulo Tabuada