English
Related papers

Related papers: Encoding Material Safety using Control Barrier Fun…

200 papers

Optimal control problems with constraints ensuring safety and convergence to desired states can be mapped onto a sequence of real time optimization problems through the use of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) and Control Lyapunov Functions…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-12-10 Wei Xiao , Calin A. Belta , Christos G. Cassandras

This paper investigates the safety analysis and verification of nonlinear systems subject to high-relative-degree constraints and unknown disturbance. The closed-form solution of the high-order control barrier functions (HOCBF) optimization…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-11 Yan Wei , Yu Feng , Linlin Ou , Yueying Wang , Xinyi Yu

In collaborative human-robot environments, the unpredictable and dynamic nature of human motion can lead to situations where collisions become unavoidable. In such cases, it is essential for the robotic system to proactively mitigate…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-09 Patanjali Maithani , Aliasghar Arab , Farshad Khorrami , Prashanth Krishnamurthy

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have emerged as a powerful paradigm in control theory, providing a principled approach to enforcing safety-critical constraints in dynamic systems. This survey paper comprehensively explores the foundational…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-08-27 Promit Panja

Control systems operating in the real world face countless sources of unpredictable uncertainties. These random disturbances can render deterministic guarantees inapplicable and cause catastrophic safety failures. To overcome this, this…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-10 Pol Mestres , Blake Werner , Ryan K. Cosner , Aaron D. Ames

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

We present a closed-form optimal control that satisfies both safety constraints (i.e., state constraints) and input constraints (e.g., actuator limits) using a composition of multiple control barrier functions (CBFs). This main contribution…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-08 Pedram Rabiee , Jesse B. Hoagg

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used in safety-critical controllers. However, constructing a valid CBF is challenging, especially under nonlinear or non-convex constraints and for high relative degree systems. Meanwhile, finding…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-10-12 Bolun Dai , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

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

Control barrier functions (CBFs) offer a powerful tool for enforcing safety specifications in control synthesis. This paper deals with the problem of constructing valid CBFs. Given a second-order system and any desired safety set with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-17 Mohammed Alyaseen , Nikolay Atanasov , Jorge Cortes

Safe real-time control of robotic manipulators in unstructured environments requires handling numerous safety constraints without compromising task performance. Traditional approaches, such as artificial potential fields (APFs), suffer from…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Daniel Morton , Marco Pavone

This paper presents a framework for the safety-critical control of robotic systems, when safety is defined on safe regions in the configuration space. To maintain safety, we synthesize a safe velocity based on control barrier function…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-21 Tamas G. Molnar , Ryan K. Cosner , Andrew W. Singletary , Wyatt Ubellacker , Aaron D. Ames

Over the decades, kinematic controllers have proven to be practically useful for applications like set-point and trajectory tracking in robotic systems. To this end, we formulate a novel safety-critical paradigm for kinematic control in…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-09-22 Andrew Singletary , Shishir Kolathaya , Aaron D. Ames

Soft robot manipulators have the potential for deployment in delicate environments to perform complex manipulation tasks. However, existing obstacle detection and avoidance methods do not consider limits on the forces that manipulators may…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Akua K. Dickson , Juan C. Pacheco Garcia , Andrew P. Sabelhaus

Robotic grasping requires safe force interaction to prevent a grasped object from being damaged or slipping out of the hand. In this vein, this paper proposes an integrated framework for grasping with formal safety guarantees based on…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-20 Yitaek Kim , Jeeseop Kim , Albert H. Li , Aaron D. Ames , Christoffer Sloth

Safe control in unknown environments is a significant challenge in robotics. While Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are widely used to guarantee system safety, they often assume known environments with predefined obstacles. The proposed…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-09-16 Golnaz Raja , Teemu Mökkönen , Reza Ghabcheloo

Robots operating in real world settings must navigate and maintain safety while interacting with many heterogeneous agents and obstacles. Multi-Agent Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have emerged as a computationally efficient tool to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-09-24 Richard Cheng , Mohammad Javad Khojasteh , Aaron D. Ames , Joel W. Burdick

This paper presents two new control approaches for guaranteed safety (remaining in a safe set) subject to actuator constraints (the control is in a convex polytope). The control signals are computed using real-time optimization, including…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-10-11 Pedram Rabiee , Jesse B. Hoagg

This paper addresses the problem of safety-critical control for non-affine control systems. It has been shown that optimizing quadratic costs subject to state and control constraints can be sub-optimally reduced to a sequence of quadratic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Wei Xiao , Ross Allen , Daniela Rus

Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…