Related papers: Singularity-Avoidance Control of Robotic Systems w…
Set invariance techniques such as control barrier functions (CBFs) can be used to enforce time-varying constraints such as keeping a safe distance from dynamic objects. However, existing methods for enforcing time-varying constraints often…
Over the decades, kinematic controllers have proven to be practically useful for applications like set-point and trajectory tracking in robotic systems. To this end, we formulate a novel safety-critical paradigm for kinematic control in…
Safety is a fundamental requirement of many robotic systems. Control barrier function (CBF)-based approaches have been proposed to guarantee the safety of robotic systems. However, the effectiveness of these approaches highly relies on the…
Ensuring safety for autonomous robots operating in dynamic environments can be challenging due to factors such as unmodeled dynamics, noisy sensor measurements, and partial observability. To account for these limitations, it is common to…
We propose a learning-based Control Barrier Function (CBF) to reduce conservatism in collision avoidance for car-like robots. Traditional CBFs often use the Euclidean distance between robots' centers as a safety margin, which neglects their…
In this work, we address the problem of ensuring real-time safety in autonomous robot navigation, in spatially constrained dynamic environments, by utilizing only onboard sensors. We present a real-time control architecture that integrates…
Safety stands as the primary obstacle preventing the widespread adoption of learning-based robotic systems in our daily lives. While reinforcement learning (RL) shows promise as an effective robot learning paradigm, conventional RL…
In this paper, we present a novel probabilistic safe control framework for human-robot interaction that combines control barrier functions (CBFs) with conformal risk control to provide formal safety guarantees while considering complex…
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…
Breaking safety constraints in control systems can lead to potential risks, resulting in unexpected costs or catastrophic damage. Nevertheless, uncertainty is ubiquitous, even among similar tasks. In this paper, we develop a novel adaptive…
The optimal performance of robotic systems is usually achieved near the limit of state and input bounds. Model predictive control (MPC) is a prevalent strategy to handle these operational constraints, however, safety still remains an open…
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…
Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to endow systems with properties of stability and safety, and have been deployed successfully in multiple domains. Despite this success, model uncertainty remains a significant challenge in synthesizing…
Motion planning failures during autonomous navigation often occur when safety constraints are either too conservative, leading to deadlocks, or too liberal, resulting in collisions. To improve robustness, a robot must dynamically adapt its…
Autonomous robot navigation can be particularly demanding, especially when the surrounding environment is not known and safety of the robot is crucial. This work relates to the synthesis of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) through data for…
The singularities of serial robotic manipulators are those configurations in which the robot loses the ability to move in at least one direction. Hence, their identification is fundamental to enhance the performance of current control and…
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…
This work presents Neural Gaits, a method for learning dynamic walking gaits through the enforcement of set invariance that can be refined episodically using experimental data from the robot. We frame walking as a set invariance problem…
Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to develop feedback controllers that endow systems with properties such as safety and stability. The guarantees ensured by these controllers often rely on accurate estimates of the system state for…
Providing safety guarantees for learning-based controllers is important for real-world applications. One approach to realizing safety for arbitrary control policies is safety filtering. If necessary, the filter modifies control inputs to…