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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

This paper addresses the challenge of ensuring safety in stochastic control systems with high-relative-degree constraints, while maintaining feasibility and mitigating conservatism in risk evaluation. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs)…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-08 Shuo Liu , Calin A. Belta

In this letter we propose a holistic analysis merging the techniques of passivity-based control (PBC) and control barrier functions (CBF). We constructively find conditions under which passivity of the closed-loop system is preserved under…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Federico Califano

For efficient and robust task accomplishment in multi-agent systems, an agent must be able to distinguish cooperative agents from non-cooperative agents, i.e., uncooperative and adversarial agents. Task descriptions capturing safety and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-12 Hardik Parwana , Dimitra Panagou

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are a popular approach to design feedback laws that achieve safety guarantees for nonlinear systems. The CBF-based controller design relies on the availability of a model to select feasible inputs from the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-17 Lukas Lanza , Johannes Köhler , Dario Dennstädt , Thomas Berger , Karl Worthmann

Control barrier function (CBF) has recently started to serve as a basis to develop approaches for enforcing safety requirements in control systems. However, constructing such function for a general system is a non-trivial task. This paper…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-01-02 Zihao Liang , Jason King Ching Lo

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for safety-critical controller design for nonlinear systems. Existing design paradigms do not address the gap between theory (controller design with continuous…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-15 Andrew J. Taylor , Victor D. Dorobantu , Ryan K. Cosner , Yisong Yue , Aaron D. Ames

Safety-critical control is essential for humanoid robots operating in complex human-centered environments, where physical safety constraints such as joint limits, self-collision avoidance, obstacle avoidance, and workspace boundaries must…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Kwanwoo Lee , Sanghyuk Park , Gyeongjae Park , Myeong-Ju Kim , Jaeheung Park

This paper presents an approach to design control barrier functions (CBFs) for arbitrary state and input constraints using tools from the reference governor literature. In particular, it is shown that dynamic safety margins (DSMs) are CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-25 Victor Freire , Marco M. Nicotra

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

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

Safety filters based on Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) provide formal guarantees of forward invariance, but are often difficult to implement in networked dynamical systems. This is due to global coupling and communication requirements.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-07 Emiliano Dall'Anese

This paper introduces integral control barrier functions (I-CBFs) as a means to enable the safety-critical integral control of nonlinear systems. Importantly, I-CBFs allow for the holistic encoding of both state constraints and input bounds…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-09 Aaron D. Ames , Gennaro Notomista , Yorai Wardi , Magnus Egerstedt

This work addresses the challenge of safe and efficient mobile robot navigation in complex dynamic environments with concave moving obstacles. Reactive safe controllers like Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) design obstacle avoidance…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Yifan Xue , Ze Zhang , Knut Åkesson , Nadia Figueroa

With the increasing need for safe control in the domain of autonomous driving, model-based safety-critical control approaches are widely used, especially Control Barrier Function (CBF)-based approaches. Among them, Exponential CBF (eCBF) is…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-05-10 Spencer Van Koevering , Yiwei Lyu , Wenhao Luo , John Dolan

The safety-critical control of robotic systems often must account for multiple, potentially conflicting, safety constraints. This paper proposes novel relaxation techniques to address safety-critical control problems in the presence of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Jaemin Lee , Jeeseop Kim , Aaron D. Ames

Obstacle avoidance is central to safe navigation, especially for robots with arbitrary and nonconvex geometries operating in cluttered environments. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) approaches often rely on analytic clearance…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Shuo Liu , Zhe Huang , Calin A. Belta

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

Adaptive control provides closed-loop stability and reference tracking for uncertain dynamical systems through online parameter adaptation. These properties alone, however, do not ensure safety in the sense of forward invariance of state…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-17 Johannes Autenrieb , Peter A. Fisher , Anuradha Annaswamy

Control barrier function (CBF)-based methods provide the minimum modification necessary to formally guarantee safety in the context of quadratic programming, and strict safety guarantee for safety critical systems. However, most CBF-related…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-27 Xiaoxiao Li , Zhirui Sun , Hongpeng Wang , Shuai Li , Jiankun Wang