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Related papers: Survey Paper on Control Barrier Functions

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Control barrier functions (CBFs) and safety-critical control have seen a rapid increase in popularity in recent years, predominantly applied to systems in aerospace, robotics and neural network controllers. Control barrier functions can…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-02-27 David van Wijk

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

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been widely used for synthesizing controllers in safety-critical applications. When used as a safety filter, it provides a simple and computationally efficient way to obtain safe controls from a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-03-13 Bolun Dai , Heming Huang , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

This paper considers the general problem of transitioning theoretically safe controllers to hardware. Concretely, we explore the application of control barrier functions (CBFs) to sampled-data systems: systems that evolve continuously but…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-14 Andrew Singletary , Yuxiao Chen , Aaron D. Ames

We present a novel method for designing higher-order Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) that guarantee convergence to a safe set within a user-specified finite. Traditional Higher Order CBFs (HOCBFs) ensure asymptotic safety but lack…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-21 Janani S K , Shishir Kolathaya

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

This paper provides an introduction and overview of recent work on control barrier functions and their use to verify and enforce safety properties in the context of (optimization based) safety-critical controllers. We survey the main…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-03-28 Aaron D. Ames , Samuel Coogan , Magnus Egerstedt , Gennaro Notomista , Koushil Sreenath , Paulo Tabuada

Using control barrier functions (CBFs) as safety filters provides a computationally inexpensive yet effective method for constructing controllers in safety-critical applications. However, using CBFs requires the construction of a valid CBF,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Bolun Dai , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) aim to ensure safety by constraining the control input at each time step so that the system state remains within a desired safe region. This paper presents a framework for CBFs in stochastic systems in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-20 Andrew Clark

In safety-critical control systems, ensuring both safety and feasibility under sampled-data implementations is crucial for practical deployment. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) frameworks, such as High-Order CBFs (HOCBFs),…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-09 Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta

This paper focuses on safety filters designed based on Control Barrier Functions (CBFs): these are modifications of a nominal stabilizing controller typically utilized in safety-critical control applications to render a given subset of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-17 Pol Mestres , Yiting Chen , Emiliano Dall'anese , Jorge Cortés

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) can provide provable safety guarantees for dynamic systems. However, finding a valid CBF for a system of interest is often non-trivial, especially for systems having low computational resources, higher-order…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-06 Mattias Trende , Petter Ögren

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) enforce safety by rendering a prescribed safe set forward invariant. However, standard CBFs are limited to safety constraints with relative degree one, while High-Order CBF (HOCBF) methods address higher…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-22 Jianye Xu , Bassam Alrifaee

This paper introduces integral control barrier functions (I-CBFs) as a means to enable the safety-critical integral control of nonlinear systems. Importantly, I-CBFs allow for the holistic encoding of both state constraints and input bounds…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-09 Aaron D. Ames , Gennaro Notomista , Yorai Wardi , Magnus Egerstedt

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 presents a methodology for ensuring that the composition of multiple Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) always leads to feasible conditions on the control input, even in the presence of input constraints. In the case of a system…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-24 Joseph Breeden , Dimitra Panagou

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

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,…

This paper addresses the problem of safety-critical control for non-affine control systems. It has been shown that optimizing quadratic costs subject to state and control constraints can be sub-optimally reduced to a sequence of quadratic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Wei Xiao , Ross Allen , Daniela Rus

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