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Learning-based controllers, such as neural network (NN) controllers, can show high empirical performance but lack formal safety guarantees. To address this issue, control barrier functions (CBFs) have been applied as a safety filter to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-10 Shuo Yang , Shaoru Chen , Victor M. Preciado , Rahul Mangharam

Recent work has shown that stabilizing an affine control system while optimizing a quadratic cost subject to state and control constraints can be mapped to a sequence of Quadratic Programs (QPs) using Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-26 Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta

Control barrier functions (CBF) are widely explored to enforce the safety-critical constraints on nonlinear systems recently. There are many researchers incorporating the control barrier functions into path planning algorithms to find a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-02 Leonas Liu , Yingfan Zhang , Larry Zhang , Mehbi Kermanshabi

This paper presents methodologies for constructing Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for nonlinear, control-affine systems, in the presence of input constraints and bounded disturbances. More specifically, given a constraint function with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-06-12 Joseph Breeden , Dimitra Panagou

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…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-12-24 Andrew Taylor , Andrew Singletary , Yisong Yue , Aaron Ames

Control barrier functions (CBF) have become popular as a safety filter to guarantee the safety of nonlinear dynamical systems for arbitrary inputs. However, it is difficult to construct functions that satisfy the CBF constraints for high…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-06 Oswin So , Zachary Serlin , Makai Mann , Jake Gonzales , Kwesi Rutledge , Nicholas Roy , Chuchu Fan

Safety in dynamical systems is commonly pursued using control barrier functions (CBFs) which enforce safety-constraints over the entire duration of a system's evolution. We propose a prescribed-time safety (PTSf) design which enforces…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Imoleayo Abel , Drew Steeves , Miroslav Krstic , Mrdjan Jankovic

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have been widely applied to safety-critical robotic applications. However, the construction of control barrier functions for robotic systems remains a challenging task. Recently, collision detection using…

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have seen widespread success in providing forward invariance and safety guarantees for dynamical control systems. A crucial limitation of discrete-time formulations is that CBFs that are nonconcave in their…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-14 James Usevitch , Juan Augusto Paredes Salazar , Ankit Goel

Applications that require multi-robot systems to operate independently for extended periods of time in unknown or unstructured environments face a broad set of challenges, such as hardware degradation, changing weather patterns, or…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-04-16 Yousef Emam , Paul Glotfelter , Sean Wilson , Gennaro Notomista , Magnus Egerstedt

Control barrier function (CBF)-based methods provide the minimum modification necessary to formally guarantee safety in the context of quadratic programming, and strict safety guarantee for safety critical systems. However, most CBF-related…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-27 Xiaoxiao Li , Zhirui Sun , Hongpeng Wang , Shuai Li , Jiankun Wang

This paper investigates the problem of composing multiple control barrier functions (CBFs) -- and matrix control barrier functions (MCBFs) -- through logical and combinatorial operations. Standard CBF formulations naturally enable…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-22 Pio Ong , Haejoon Lee , Tamas G. Molnar , Dimitra Panagou , Aaron D. Ames

Safety is always one of the most critical principles for a system to be controlled. This paper investigates a safety-critical control scheme for unknown structured systems by using the control barrier function (CBF) method. Benefited from…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-17 Shengbo Wang , Bo Lyu , Shiping Wen , Kaibo Shi , Song Zhu , Tingwen Huang

Adaptive control provides closed-loop stability and reference tracking for uncertain dynamical systems through online parameter adaptation. These properties alone, however, do not ensure safety in the sense of forward invariance of state…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Johannes Autenrieb , Peter A. Fisher , Anuradha Annaswamy

Guaranteeing the safety of nonlinear systems with bounded inputs remains a key challenge in safe autonomy. Backup control barrier functions (bCBFs) provide a powerful mechanism for constructing controlled invariant sets by propagating…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-20 David E. J. van Wijk , Dohyun Lee , Ersin Das , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames , Joel W. Burdick

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-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

Safe operation is essential for deploying robots in human-centered 3D environments. Soft continuum manipulators provide passive safety through mechanical compliance, but still require active control to achieve reliable collision avoidance.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-23 Kiwan Wong , Maximillian Stölzle , Wei Xiao , Daniela Rus

Safety filters based on Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a practical tool for the safety-critical control of autonomous systems. These approaches encode safety through a value function and enforce safety by imposing a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-08-23 Sander Tonkens , Sylvia Herbert

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