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Stability and safety are two important aspects in safety-critical control of dynamical systems. It has been a well established fact in control theory that stability properties can be characterized by Lyapunov functions. Reachability…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-03 Yiming Meng , Yinan Li , Maxwell Fitzsimmons , Jun Liu

Control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) and control barrier functions (CBFs) have been used to develop provably safe controllers by means of quadratic programs (QPs), guaranteeing safety in the form of trajectory invariance with respect to a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-21 Matheus F. Reis , A. Pedro Aguiar , Paulo Tabuada

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 existence of a Control Barrier Function (CBF) for a control-affine system provides a powerful design tool to ensure safety. Any controller that satisfies the CBF condition and ensures that the trajectories of the closed-loop system are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-14 Mohammed Alyaseen , Nikolay Atanasov , Jorge Cortes

A combination of control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) and control barrier functions (CBFs) forms an efficient framework for addressing control challenges in safe stabilization. In our previous research, we developed an analytical control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-06 Ming Li , Zhiyong Sun

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

This paper establishes the equivalence between robust safety and the existence of a barrier function certificate for differential inclusions. More precisely, for a robustly-safe differential inclusion, a barrier function is constructed as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-05 Mohamed Maghenem , Masoumeh Ghanbarpour

We prove a robust converse barrier function theorem via the converse Lyapunov theory. While the use of a Lyapunov function as a barrier function is straightforward, the existence of a converse Lyapunov function as a barrier function for a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-22 Jun Liu

This paper presents converse theorems for safety in terms of barrier functions for unconstrained continuous-time systems modeled as differential inclusions. Via a counterexample, we show the lack of existence of autonomous and continuous…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-06 Mohamed Maghenem , Ricardo. G. Sanfelice

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a powerful tool for enforcing safety constraints in control systems, but their direct application to complex, high-dimensional dynamics is often challenging. In many settings, safety certificates are…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Nikolaos Bousias , Charalampia Stamouli , Anastasios Tsiamis , George Pappas

This paper studies control synthesis for a general class of nonlinear, control-affine dynamical systems under additive disturbances and state-estimation errors. We enforce forward invariance of static and dynamic safe sets and convergence…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-14 Kunal Garg , Dimitra Panagou

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) provide a powerful framework for ensuring safety in dynamical systems. However, their application typically relies on full state information, which is often violated in real-world due to the availability of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-19 Vaishnavi Jagabathula , Ahan Basu , Pushpak Jagtap

In this paper we address the problem of control Lyapunov-barrier function (CLBF)-based safe stabilization for a class of nonlinear control-affine systems. A difficulty may arise for the case when a constraint has the relative degree larger…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-19 Haechan Pyon , Gyunghoon Park

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

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,…

Safety is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. Recently, one-step or multi-step optimal control problems for discrete-time nonlinear dynamical system were formulated to offer tracking stability using control Lyapunov functions…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-04 Jun Zeng , Zhongyu Li , Koushil Sreenath

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

Connected automated vehicles have shown great potential to improve the efficiency of transportation systems in terms of passenger comfort, fuel economy, stability of driving behavior and mitigation of traffic congestions. Yet, to deploy…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-09-04 Tamas G. Molnar , Gabor Orosz , Aaron D. Ames

Barrier functions (also called certificates) have been an important tool for the verification of hybrid systems, and have also played important roles in optimization and multi-objective control. The extension of a barrier function to a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-12-07 Xiangru Xu , Paulo Tabuada , Jessy W. Grizzle , Aaron D. Ames

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are a powerful tool for synthesizing safe control actions; however, constructing CBFs remains difficult for general nonlinear systems. In this work, we provide a constructive framework for synthesizing CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-04 Gilbert Bahati , Ryan K. Cosner , Max H. Cohen , Ryan M. Bena , Aaron D. Ames