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The increasing complexity of modern robotic systems and the environments they operate in necessitates the formal consideration of safety in the presence of imperfect measurements. In this paper we propose a rigorous framework for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-04-30 Ryan K. Cosner , Andrew W. Singletary , Andrew J. Taylor , Tamas G. Molnar , Katherine L. Bouman , Aaron D. Ames

This paper addresses the challenge of ensuring safety and feasibility in control systems using Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). Existing CBF-based Quadratic Programs (CBF-QPs) often encounter feasibility issues due to mixed relative degree…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-07 Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta

Sampling-based motion planning methods for manipulators in crowded environments often suffer from expensive collision checking and high sampling complexity, which make them difficult to use in real time. To address this issue, we propose a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Mingxin Yu , Chenning Yu , M-Mahdi Naddaf-Sh , Devesh Upadhyay , Sicun Gao , Chuchu Fan

This paper presents a methodology for constructing Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) that proactively consider the future safety of a system along a nominal trajectory, and effect corrective action before the trajectory leaves a designated…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-09 Joseph Breeden , Dimitra Panagou

Despite great successes, model predictive control (MPC) relies on an accurate dynamical model and requires high onboard computational power, impeding its wider adoption in engineering systems, especially for nonlinear real-time systems with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-07-03 Amin Vahidi-Moghaddam , Kaian Chen , Kaixiang Zhang , Zhaojian Li , Yan Wang , Kai Wu

Control barrier functions provide a powerful means for synthesizing safety filters that ensure safety framed as forward set invariance. Key to CBFs' effectiveness is the simple inequality on the system dynamics: $\dot{h} \geq - \alpha(h)$.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-18 Pio Ong , Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

Control barrier functions (CBFs) recently introduced a systematic way to guarantee the system's safety through set invariance. Together with a nominal control method, it establishes a safety-critical control mechanism. The resulting safety…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-09-13 Mohammad Aali , Jun Liu

This paper addresses learning safe output feedback control laws from partial observations of expert demonstrations. We assume that a model of the system dynamics and a state estimator are available along with corresponding error bounds,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-04 Lars Lindemann , Alexander Robey , Lejun Jiang , Satyajeet Das , Stephen Tu , Nikolai Matni

In this paper we present a multi-rate control architecture for safety critical systems. We consider a high level planner and a low level controller which operate at different frequencies. This multi-rate behavior is described by a piecewise…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-07-07 Ugo Rosolia , Aaron D. Ames

Ensuring liveness and safety of autonomous and cyber-physical systems remains a fundamental challenge, particularly when multiple safety constraints are present. This letter advances the theoretical foundations of safety-filter Quadratic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-24 Matheus F. Reis , José P. Carvalho , A. Pedro Aguiar

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…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-14 Andrew Singletary , Yuxiao Chen , Aaron D. Ames

This paper proposes a cascaded control framework for quadrotor trajectory tracking with formal safety guarantees. First, we design a controller consisting of an outer-loop position model predictive control (MPC) and an inner-loop nonlinear…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-08 Ming Gao , Zhanglin Shangguan , Shuo Liu , Liang Wu , Bo Yang , Wei Xiao

We study the problem of verification and synthesis of robust control barrier functions (CBF) for control-affine polynomial systems with bounded additive uncertainty and convex polynomial constraints on the control. We first formulate robust…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-25 Shucheng Kang , Yuxiao Chen , Heng Yang , Marco Pavone

In safety-critical control systems, ensuring both safety and feasibility under sampled-data implementations is crucial for practical deployment. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) frameworks, such as High-Order CBFs (HOCBFs),…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-09 Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta

Reinforcement learning (RL) can improve control performance by seeking to learn optimal control policies in the end-use environment for vehicles and other systems. To accomplish this, RL algorithms need to sufficiently explore the state and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-05-21 Habtamu Hailemichael , Beshah Ayalew , Andrej Ivanco

While Model Predictive Control (MPC) enforces safety via constraints, its real-time execution can exceed embedded compute budgets. We propose a Barrier-integrated Adaptive Neural Model Predictive Control (BAN-MPC) framework that synergizes…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Kaikai Wang , Tianxun Li , Liang Xu , Qinglei Hu , Keyou You

This letter addresses the constraint compatibility problem of control barrier functions (CBFs), which occurs when a safety-critical CBF requires a system to apply more control effort than it is capable of generating. This inevitably leads…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-28 Logan E. Beaver

Bringing dynamic robots into the wild requires a tenuous balance between performance and safety. Yet controllers designed to provide robust safety guarantees often result in conservative behavior, and tuning these controllers to find the…

This work explores a collaborative method for ensuring safety in multi-agent formation control problems. We formulate a control barrier function (CBF) based safety filter control law for a generic distributed formation controller and extend…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Brooks A. Butler , Chi Ho Leung , Philip E. Paré

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…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Marvin Harms , Mihir Kulkarni , Nikhil Khedekar , Martin Jacquet , Kostas Alexis