English
Related papers

Related papers: Certificated Actor-Critic: Hierarchical Reinforcem…

200 papers

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have become a popular tool to enforce safety of a control system. CBFs are commonly utilized in a quadratic program formulation (CBF-QP) as safety-critical constraints. A class $\mathcal{K}$ function in CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-12 Hengbo Ma , Bike Zhang , Masayoshi Tomizuka , Koushil Sreenath

Inspired by the success of imitation and inverse reinforcement learning in replicating expert behavior through optimal control, we propose a learning based approach to safe controller synthesis based on control barrier functions (CBFs). We…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-10 Alexander Robey , Haimin Hu , Lars Lindemann , Hanwen Zhang , Dimos V. Dimarogonas , Stephen Tu , Nikolai Matni

Physical human-robot interaction offers the potential to leverage human intelligence and robot physical capabilities to enable a range of exciting applications, e.g., collaborative robots for rehabilitation. Safety is critical for the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rui Luo , Jonas Mariager Jakobsen , Wesley Roozing , Federico Califano , Cheng Fang

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

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found limited success beyond simulated applications, and one main reason is the absence of safety guarantees during the learning process. Real world systems would realistically fail or break…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-22 Richard Cheng , Gabor Orosz , Richard M. Murray , Joel W. Burdick

Optimal control strategies are often combined with safety certificates to ensure both performance and safety in safety-critical systems. A prominent example is combining Model Predictive Control (MPC) with Control Barrier Functions (CBF).…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-05 Kerim Dzhumageldyev , Filippo Airaldi , Azita Dabiri

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 Function (CBF) is an emerging method that guarantees safety in path planning problems by generating a control command to ensure the forward invariance of a safety set. Most of the developments up to date assume availability…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-02 Chuyuan Tao , Wenbin Wan , Junjie Gao , Bihao Mo , Hunmin Kim , Naira Hovakimyan

Robust control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled mechanism for smooth safety enforcement under worst-case disturbances. However, existing approaches typically rely on explicit, closed-form structure in the dynamics (e.g.,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-16 Donggeon David Oh , Duy P. Nguyen , Haimin Hu , Jaime Fernández Fisac

We propose new methods to synthesize control barrier function (CBF)-based safe controllers that avoid input saturation, which can cause safety violations. In particular, our method is created for high-dimensional, general nonlinear systems,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Simin Liu , Changliu Liu , John Dolan

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have become powerful tools for ensuring safety in nonlinear systems. However, finding valid CBFs that guarantee persistent safety and feasibility remains an open challenge, especially in systems with input…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Taekyung Kim , Robin Inho Kee , Dimitra Panagou

Hybrid dynamical systems are ubiquitous as practical robotic applications often involve both continuous states and discrete switchings. Safety is a primary concern for hybrid robotic systems. Existing safety-critical control approaches for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Shuo Yang , Yu Chen , Xiang Yin , George J. Pappas , Rahul Mangharam

Reinforcement learning is a powerful technique for developing new robot behaviors. However, typical lack of safety guarantees constitutes a hurdle for its practical application on real robots. To address this issue, safe reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-29 Maeva Guerrier , Hassan Fouad , Giovanni Beltrame

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have emerged as a popular topic in safety critical control due to their ability to provide formal safety guarantees for dynamical systems. Despite their powerful capabilities, the determination of feasible…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-18 Ali Mesbah , Seid H. Pourtakdoust , Alireza Sharifi , Afshin Banazadeh

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated impressive performance in various areas such as video games and robotics. However, ensuring safety and stability, which are two critical properties from a control perspective, remains a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-02 Liqun Zhao , Konstantinos Gatsis , Antonis Papachristodoulou

Safety filters leveraging control barrier functions (CBFs) are highly effective for enforcing safe behavior on complex systems. It is often easier to synthesize CBFs for a Reduced order Model (RoM), and track the resulting safe behavior on…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-09 William D. Compton , Max H. Cohen , Aaron D. Ames

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

Reinforcement learning (RL), while powerful and expressive, can often prioritize performance at the expense of safety. Yet safety violations can lead to catastrophic outcomes in real-world deployments. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) offer…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Lizhi Yang , Blake Werner , Massimiliano de Sa , Aaron D. Ames

In this paper, we consider a way to safely navigate the robots in unknown environments using measurement data from sensory devices. The control barrier function (CBF) is one of the promising approaches to encode safety requirements of the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-11 Wataru Hashimoto , Kazumune Hashimoto , Akifumi Wachi , Xun Shen , Masako Kishida , Shigemasa Takai

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