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Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a rigorous framework for designing controllers enforcing safety constraints. While CBF theory is well-developed for a finite number of safety constraints, certain applications, e.g., backup CBFs,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-20 Max H. Cohen , Pio Ong , Pol Mestres , Aaron D. Ames

Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to develop feedback controllers that endow systems with properties such as safety and stability. The guarantees ensured by these controllers often rely on accurate estimates of the system state for…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-11-02 Sarah Dean , Andrew J. Taylor , Ryan K. Cosner , Benjamin Recht , Aaron D. Ames

Incorporating both flexible and rigid components in robot designs offers a unique solution to the limitations of traditional rigid robotics by enabling both compliance and strength. This paper explores the challenges and solutions for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-28 Zach J. Patterson , Wei Xiao , Emily Sologuren , Daniela Rus

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

In this paper, we propose a safety-critical controller based on time-varying control barrier functions (CBFs) for a robot with an unicycle model in the continuous-time domain to achieve navigation and dynamic collision avoidance. Unlike…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Jihao Huang , Zhitao Liu , Jun Zeng , Xuemin Chi , Hongye Su

Control barrier functions (CBFs) play a critical role in the design of safe optimization-based controllers for control-affine systems. Given a CBF associated with a desired ``safe'' set, the typical approach consists in embedding CBF-based…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-12 Yiting Chen , Pol Mestres , Jorge Cortes , Emiliano Dall'Anese

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

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are a powerful tool for the constrained control of nonlinear systems; however, the majority of results in the literature focus on systems subject to a single CBF constraint, making it challenging to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-05 Max H. Cohen , Eugene Lavretsky , Aaron D. Ames

In this paper, we establish a connection between model predictive control (MPC) techniques and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). Recognizing the similarity between CBFs and Control Lyapunov Functions (CLFs), we propose a MPC formulation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-03 Jingyi Huang , Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Paul Goulart

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

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are becoming popular tools in guaranteeing safety for nonlinear systems and constraints, and they can reduce a constrained optimal control problem into a sequence of Quadratic Programs (QPs) for affine…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Wei Xiao , Christos G. Cassandras , Calin A. Belta , Daniela Rus

This paper presents a time-varying soft-maximum composite control barrier function (CBF) that can be used to ensure safety in an a priori unknown environment, where local perception information regarding the safe set is periodically…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-26 Amirsaeid Safari , Jesse B. Hoagg

Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have provided a very versatile framework for the synthesis of safe control architectures for a wide class of nonlinear dynamical systems. Typically, CBF-based synthesis approaches apply to systems that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Shuo Yang , Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Hideki Okamoto , Rahul Mangharam

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have become a popular tool for enforcing set invariance in safety-critical control systems. While guaranteeing safety, most CBF approaches are myopic in the sense that they solve an optimization problem at…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-08-11 Max Cohen , Calin Belta

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) enforce safety by rendering a prescribed safe set forward invariant. However, standard CBFs are limited to safety constraints with relative degree one, while High-Order CBF (HOCBF) methods address higher…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-22 Jianye Xu , Bassam Alrifaee

In this paper, we introduce a class of future-focused control barrier functions (ff-CBF) aimed at improving traditionally myopic CBF based control design and study their efficacy in the context of an unsignaled four-way intersection…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-05 Mitchell Black , Mrdjan Jankovic , Abhishek Sharma , Dimitra Panagou

This paper presents a new approach for guaranteed safety subject to input constraints (e.g., actuator limits) using a composition of multiple control barrier functions (CBFs). First, we present a method for constructing a single CBF from…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-10 Pedram Rabiee , Jesse B. Hoagg

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

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…

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