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We address the problem of optimizing the performance of a dynamic system while satisfying hard safety constraints at all times. Implementing an optimal control solution is limited by the computational cost required to derive it in real…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-08-19 Wei Xiao , Christos G. Cassandras , Calin A. Belta

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

Control barrier functions-based quadratic programming (CBF-QP) is gaining popularity as an effective controller synthesis tool for safe control. However, the provable safety is established on an accurate dynamic model and access to all…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-29 Jinfeng Chen , Zhiqiang Gao , Qin Lin

This paper presents a time-varying soft-maximum composite control barrier function (CBF) that can be used to ensure safety in an a priori unknown environment, where local perception information regarding the safe set is periodically…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-26 Amirsaeid Safari , Jesse B. Hoagg

This paper addresses the challenge of integrating explicit hard constraints into the control barrier function (CBF) framework for ensuring safety in autonomous systems, including robots. We propose a novel data-driven method to derive CBFs…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-14 Jaemin Lee , Jeeseop Kim , Aaron D. Ames

In this paper, we develop a safe control synthesis method that integrates state estimation and parameter estimation within an adaptive optimal control (AOC) and control barrier function (CBF)-based control architecture. The developed…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-24 Tochukwu E. Ogri , Muzaffar Qureshi , Zachary I. Bell , Wanjiku A. Makumi , Rushikesh Kamalapurkar

With the rapid growth of autonomous vehicle technologies, effective path-tracking control has become a critical component in ensuring safety and efficiency in complex traffic scenarios. When a high level decision making agent generates a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-30 Xincheng Cao , Haochong Chen , Levent Guvenc , Bilin Aksun-Guvenc

We propose integrating an approximation of a predictive control barrier function (PCBF) in a safety filter framework, resulting in a prediction horizon independent formulation. The PCBF is defined through the value function of an optimal…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-26 Alexandre Didier , Melanie N. Zeilinger

This paper addresses the safety challenges in impulsive systems, where abrupt state jumps introduce significant complexities into system dynamics. A unified framework is proposed by integrating Quadratic Programming (QP), Control Barrier…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-11 Zihan Liu , Yuan-Hua Ni

In this paper, we present a novel theoretical framework for online adaptation of Control Barrier Function (CBF) parameters, i.e., of the class K functions included in the CBF condition, under input constraints. We introduce the concept of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Taekyung Kim , Randal W. Beard , Dimitra Panagou

Control barrier functions (CBFs) enable guaranteed safe multi-agent navigation in the continuous domain. The resulting navigation performance, however, is highly sensitive to the underlying hyperparameters. Traditional approaches consider…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-12 Zhan Gao , Guang Yang , Amanda Prorok

Ensuring safe behavior is critical for modern autonomous cyber-physical systems. Control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used to enforce safety in autonomous systems, yet their placement within networked control architectures remains…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-01 Severin Beger , Yuling Chen , Sandra Hirche

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Jianye Xu , Bassam Alrifaee

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for safety-critical controller design for nonlinear systems. Existing design paradigms do not address the gap between theory (controller design with continuous…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-15 Andrew J. Taylor , Victor D. Dorobantu , Ryan K. Cosner , Yisong Yue , Aaron D. Ames

With the advancement of affordable self-driving vehicles using complicated nonlinear optimization but limited computation resources, computation time becomes a matter of concern. Other factors such as actuator dynamics and actuator command…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-10-18 Dvij Kalaria , Qin Lin , John M. Dolan

The safety-critical nature of adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems calls for systematic design procedures, e.g., based on formal methods or control barrier functions (CBFs), to provide strong guarantees of safety and performance under all…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-03-29 Muhammad Waqas , Muhammad Ali Murtaza , Pierluigi Nuzzo , Petros Ioannou

Control barrier functions (CBFs) offer an efficient framework for designing real-time safe controllers. However, CBF-based controllers can be short-sighted, resulting in poor performance, a behaviour which is aggravated in uncertain…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-16 Allan Andre do Nascimento , Antonis Papachristodoulou , Kostas Margellos

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

Adaptive Control Lyapunov Functions (aCLFs) were introduced 20 years ago, and provided a Lyapunov-based methodology for stabilizing systems with parameter uncertainty. The goal of this paper is to revisit this classic formulation in the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-20 Andrew J. Taylor , Aaron D. Ames

Robots deployed in unstructured, real-world environments operate under considerable uncertainty due to imperfect state estimates, model error, and disturbances. Given this real-world context, the goal of this paper is to develop controllers…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-02-27 Ryan K. Cosner , Preston Culbertson , Andrew J. Taylor , Aaron D. Ames