Related papers: Towards Safe Path Tracking Using the Simplex Archi…
This paper proposes a novel extension of the Simplex architecture with model switching and model learning to achieve safe velocity regulation of self-driving vehicles in dynamic and unforeseen environments. To guarantee the reliability of…
Providing safety guarantees for Autonomous Vehicle (AV) systems with machine-learning-based controllers remains a challenging issue. In this work, we propose Simplex-Drive, a framework that can achieve runtime safety assurance for…
Learning Enabled Components (LEC) have greatly assisted cyber-physical systems in achieving higher levels of autonomy. However, LEC's susceptibility to dynamic and uncertain operating conditions is a critical challenge for the safety of…
Recent advances in machine learning technologies and sensing have paved the way for the belief that safe, accessible, and convenient autonomous vehicles may be realized in the near future. Despite tremendous advances within this context,…
The ability to deal with systems parametric uncertainties is an essential issue for heavy self-driving vehicles in unconfined environments. In this sense, robust controllers prove to be efficient for autonomous navigation. However,…
Recently, the outstanding performance reached by neural networks in many tasks has led to their deployment in autonomous systems, such as robots and vehicles. However, neural networks are not yet trustworthy, being prone to different types…
This article addresses the obstacle avoidance problem for setpoint stabilization and path-following tasks in complex dynamic 2D environments that go beyond conventional scenes with isolated convex obstacles. A combined motion planner and…
Given a geometric path, the Time-Optimal Path Tracking problem consists in finding the control strategy to traverse the path time-optimally while regulating tracking errors. A simple yet effective approach to this problem is to decompose…
We study the navigation problem for a robot moving amidst static and dynamic obstacles and rely on a hierarchical approach to solve it. First, the reference trajectory is planned by the safe interval path planning algorithm that is capable…
Visual navigation is a core capability for mobile robots, yet end-to-end learning-based methods often struggle with generalization and safety in unseen, cluttered, or narrow environments. These limitations are especially pronounced in dense…
Maintaining safety under adaptation has long been considered to be an important capability for autonomous systems. As these systems estimate and change the ego-model of the system dynamics, questions regarding how to develop safety…
Safety is a critical feature of controller design for physical systems. When designing control policies, several approaches to guarantee this aspect of autonomy have been proposed, such as robust controllers or control barrier functions.…
We present the Neural Simplex Architecture (NSA), a new approach to runtime assurance that provides safety guarantees for neural controllers (obtained e.g. using reinforcement learning) of autonomous and other complex systems without unduly…
With the increase in data availability, it has been widely demonstrated that neural networks (NN) can capture complex system dynamics precisely in a data-driven manner. However, the architectural complexity and nonlinearity of the NNs make…
Path following and lateral stability are crucial issues for autonomous vehicles. Moreover, these problems increase in complexity when handling articulated heavy-duty vehicles due to their poor manoeuvrability, large sizes and mass…
In this article, we address the control problem of unicycle path following, using a rigidly attached target point. The initial path following problem has been transformed into a reference trajectory following problem, using saturated…
Mobile robot navigation in dynamic human environments requires policies that balance adaptability to diverse behaviors with compliance to safety constraints. We hypothesize that integrating data-driven rewards with rule-based objectives…
The interest in using reinforcement learning (RL) controllers in safety-critical applications such as robot navigation around pedestrians motivates the development of additional safety mechanisms. Running RL-enabled systems among uncertain…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has been successfully applied to a variety of robotics applications, where it outperforms classical methods. However, the safety aspect of RL and the transfer to the real world remain an open challenge. A…
Despite the numerous advances, reinforcement learning remains away from widespread acceptance for autonomous controller design as compared to classical methods due to lack of ability to effectively tackle the reality gap. The reliance on…