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Ensuring the safety of complex dynamical systems often relies on Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) Reachability Analysis or Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). Both methods require computing a function that characterizes a safe set that can be made…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Jixian Liu , Enrique Mallada

This paper proposes a control design approach for stabilizing nonlinear control systems. Our key observation is that the set of points where the decrease condition of a control Lyapunov function (CLF) is feasible can be regarded as a safe…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-19 Pol Mestres , Kehan Long , Melvin Leok , Nikolay Atanasov , Jorge Cortes

In this paper, we propose a quadratic programming-based filter for safe and stable controller design, via a Control Barrier Function (CBF) and a Control Lyapunov Function (CLF). Our method guarantees safety and local asymptotic stability…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-02 Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Antonis Papachristodoulou

Learning-based control has recently shown great efficacy in performing complex tasks for various applications. However, to deploy it in real systems, it is of vital importance to guarantee the system will stay safe. Control Barrier…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-05 Fernando Castañeda , Jason J. Choi , Wonsuhk Jung , Bike Zhang , Claire J. Tomlin , Koushil Sreenath

This letter presents a new notion of input-to-state safe control barrier functions (ISSf-CBFs), which ensure safety of nonlinear dynamical systems under input disturbances. Similar to how safety conditions are specified in terms of forward…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-08-14 Shishir Kolathaya , Aaron D. Ames

Safety is a fundamental requirement for autonomous systems operating in critical domains. Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been used to design safety filters that minimally alter nominal controls for such systems to maintain their…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Yuxuan Yang , Hussein Sibai

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) and Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) are popular tools for enforcing safety and stability of a controlled system, respectively. They are commonly utilized to build constraints that can be incorporated in a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-05 Fernando Castañeda , Jason J. Choi , Bike Zhang , Claire J. Tomlin , Koushil Sreenath

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

Safety-critical control tasks with high levels of uncertainty are becoming increasingly common. Typically, techniques that guarantee safety during learning and control utilize constraint-based safety certificates, which can be leveraged to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-11-07 Alexandre Capone , Ryan Cosner , Aaron Ames , Sandra Hirche

We propose a novel approach to certify closed-loop stability and safety of a constrained polynomial system based on the combination of Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs) and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). For polynomial systems that are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-03 Michael Schneeberger , Florian Dörfler , Silvia Mastellone

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled framework for enforcing safety in control systems -- yet the certified safe operating region in practice is often conservative, especially under input bounds. In many applications,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Pio Ong , David E. J. van Wijk , Massimiliano de Sa , Joel W. Burdick , Aaron D. Ames

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used in safety-critical controllers. However, constructing a valid CBF is challenging, especially under nonlinear or non-convex constraints and for high relative degree systems. Meanwhile, finding…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-10-12 Bolun Dai , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

This tutorial paper presents recent work of the authors that extends the theory of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to address practical challenges in the synthesis of safe controllers for autonomous systems and robots. We present novel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-29 Kunal Garg , James Usevitch , Joseph Breeden , Mitchell Black , Devansh Agrawal , Hardik Parwana , Dimitra Panagou

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

This paper addresses the challenge of safe stabilization, ensuring the system state reach the origin while avoiding unsafe regions. Existing approaches relying on smooth Lyapunov barrier functions often fail to guarantee a feasible…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-08 Jianglin Lan , Eldert van Henten , Peter Groot Koerkamp , Congcong Sun

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

The increasing complexity of control systems necessitates control laws that guarantee safety w.r.t. complex combinations of constraints. In this letter, we propose a framework to describe compositional safety specifications with control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-05 Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a powerful paradigm in control theory, providing a principled approach to enforcing safety-critical constraints in dynamic systems. This survey paper comprehensively explores the foundational…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-08-27 Promit Panja

Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have provided a very versatile framework for the synthesis of safe control architectures for a wide class of nonlinear dynamical systems. Typically, CBF-based synthesis approaches apply to systems that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Shuo Yang , Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Hideki Okamoto , Rahul Mangharam

Certifying the safety of nonlinear systems, through the lens of set invariance and control barrier functions (CBFs), offers a powerful method for controller synthesis, provided a CBF can be constructed. This paper draws connections between…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-18 Max H. Cohen , Ryan K. Cosner , Aaron D. Ames