English
Related papers

Related papers: Learning Safety for Obstacle Avoidance via Control…

200 papers

We consider the problem of safely exploring a static and unknown environment while learning valid control barrier functions (CBFs) from sensor data. Existing works either assume known environments, target specific dynamics models, or use…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-03 Paul Lutkus , Deepika Anantharaman , Stephen Tu , Lars Lindemann

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

Safety is of great importance in multi-robot navigation problems. In this paper, we propose a control barrier function (CBF) based optimizer that ensures robot safety with both high probability and flexibility, using only sensor…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-09-17 Yuxiang Cui , Longzhong Lin , Xiaolong Huang , Dongkun Zhang , Yue Wang , Rong Xiong

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

Safe path planning is critical for bipedal robots to operate in safety-critical environments. Common path planning algorithms, such as RRT or RRT*, typically use geometric or kinematic collision check algorithms to ensure collision-free…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-10-10 Chengyang Peng , Octavian Donca , Ayonga Hereid

Safety stands as the primary obstacle preventing the widespread adoption of learning-based robotic systems in our daily lives. While reinforcement learning (RL) shows promise as an effective robot learning paradigm, conventional RL…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Maeva Guerrier , Karthik Soma , Hassan Fouad , Giovanni Beltrame

The goal of this thesis is to propose the combination of Control-Barrier-Functions (CBF) with Model-Predictive-Control (MPC) resulting in the novel Model-Predictive-Control-Barrier-Function (MPCBF). It can be shown, that the performance of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-11-23 Johann Lange

In safety-critical control, managing safety constraints with high relative degrees and uncertain obstacle dynamics pose significant challenges in guaranteeing safety performance. Robust Control Barrier Functions (RCBFs) offer a potential…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-06 Kwang Hak Kim , Mamadou Diagne , Miroslav Krstić

Legged robots exhibit significant potential across diverse applications, including but not limited to hazardous environment search and rescue missions and the exploration of unexplored regions both on Earth and in outer space. However, the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Manan Tayal , Shishir Kolathaya

This paper presents a reactive planning system that allows a Cassie-series bipedal robot to avoid multiple non-overlapping obstacles via a single, continuously differentiable control barrier function (CBF). The overall system detects an…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-06-27 Jinze Liu , Minzhe Li , Jiunn-Kai Huang , Jessy W. Grizzle

Robot motion planning is central to real-world autonomous applications, such as self-driving cars, persistence surveillance, and robotic arm manipulation. One challenge in motion planning is generating control signals for nonlinear systems…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-10-08 Guang Yang , Bee Vang , Zachary Serlin , Calin Belta , Roberto Tron

This paper studies the problem of finite-time convergence to a prescribed safe set for nonlinear systems whose initial states violate the safety constraints. Existing Control Lyapunov-Barrier Functions (CLBFs) can enforce recovery to the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-27 Anni Li , Yingqing Chen , Christos G. Cassandras , Wei Xiao

We propose a design method for a robust safety filter based on Input Constrained Control Barrier Functions (ICCBF) for car-like robots moving in complex environments. A robust ICCBF that can be efficiently implemented is obtained by…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Sven Brüggemann , Dominic Nightingale , Jack Silberman , Maurício de Oliveira

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are a practical approach for designing safety-critical controllers, but constructing them for arbitrary nonlinear dynamical systems remains a challenge. Recent efforts have explored learning-based methods,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-20 Manan Tayal , Aditya Singh , Pushpak Jagtap , Shishir Kolathaya

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

Collision avoidance for robotic manipulators requires enforcing full-body safety constraints in high-dimensional configuration spaces. Control Barrier Function (CBF) based safety filters have proven effective in enabling safe behaviors, but…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Meg Wilkinson , Gilbert Bahati , Ryan M. Bena , Emily Fourney , Joel W. Burdick , Aaron D. Ames

In this paper, we propose a new class of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) that help avoid collisions with kinematic (non-zero velocity) obstacles. While the current forms of CBFs have been successful in…

As autonomous systems become increasingly prevalent in daily life, ensuring their safety is paramount. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as an effective tool for guaranteeing safety; however, manually designing them for specific…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Shreenabh Agrawal , Manan Tayal , Aditya Singh , Shishir Kolathaya

Safe navigation for multi-robot systems requires enforcing safety without sacrificing task efficiency under decentralized decision-making. Existing decentralized methods often assume robot homogeneity, making shared safety requirements…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Joonkyung Kim , Yanze Zhang , Wenhao Luo , Yiwei Lyu

Learning-based control has recently shown great efficacy in performing complex tasks for various applications. However, to deploy it in real systems, it is of vital importance to guarantee the system will stay safe. Control Barrier…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-05 Fernando Castañeda , Jason J. Choi , Wonsuhk Jung , Bike Zhang , Claire J. Tomlin , Koushil Sreenath