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Ensuring safe exploration in high-dimensional systems with unknown dynamics remains a significant challenge. Existing safe reinforcement learning methods often provide safety guarantees only in expectation, which can still lead to safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rahul Narava , Siddharth Verma , Ojas Jain , Shashi Shekhar Jha , Mayank Shekhar Jha

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have become powerful tools for ensuring safety in nonlinear systems. However, finding valid CBFs that guarantee persistent safety and feasibility remains an open challenge, especially in systems with input…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Taekyung Kim , Robin Inho Kee , Dimitra Panagou

Robust control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled mechanism for smooth safety enforcement under worst-case disturbances. However, existing approaches typically rely on explicit, closed-form structure in the dynamics (e.g.,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-16 Donggeon David Oh , Duy P. Nguyen , Haimin Hu , Jaime Fernández Fisac

In this paper, the issue of model uncertainty in safety-critical control is addressed with a data-driven approach. For this purpose, we utilize the structure of an input-ouput linearization controller based on a nominal model along with a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-06-05 Jason Choi , Fernando Castañeda , Claire J. Tomlin , Koushil Sreenath

Reinforcement learning (RL) agents need to explore their environment to learn optimal behaviors and achieve maximum rewards. However, exploration can be risky when training RL directly on real systems, while simulation-based training…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Dvij Kalaria , Qin Lin , John M. Dolan

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising tool for developing controllers for real world systems (e.g., robotics, autonomous driving, etc.). However, real systems often have constraints imposed on their state space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-22 Akshita Gupta , Inseok Hwang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated impressive performance in various areas such as video games and robotics. However, ensuring safety and stability, which are two critical properties from a control perspective, remains a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-02 Liqun Zhao , Konstantinos Gatsis , Antonis Papachristodoulou

Modern nonlinear control theory seeks to endow systems with properties of stability and safety, and have been deployed successfully in multiple domains. Despite this success, model uncertainty remains a significant challenge in synthesizing…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-12-24 Andrew Taylor , Andrew Singletary , Yisong Yue , Aaron Ames

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a control approach that can handle nonlinear stochastic optimal control problems. However, despite the promise exhibited, RL has yet to see marked translation to industrial practice primarily due to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-15 Elton Pan , Panagiotis Petsagkourakis , Max Mowbray , Dongda Zhang , Antonio del Rio-Chanona

Ensuring safety in the sense of constraint satisfaction for learning-based control is a critical challenge, especially in the model-free case. While safety filters address this challenge in the model-based setting by modifying unsafe…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-15 Kanghui He , Shengling Shi , Ton van den Boom , Bart De Schutter

Multi-robot systems (MRS) are essential for large-scale applications such as disaster response, material transport, and warehouse logistics, yet ensuring robust, safety-aware formation control in cluttered and dynamic environments remains a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Qintong Xie , Weishu Zhan , Peter Chin

Sampling-based model predictive control (MPC) has found significant success in optimal control problems with non-smooth system dynamics and cost function. Many machine learning-based works proposed to improve MPC by a) learning or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-08 Sungwook Yang , Chaoying Pei , Ran Dai , Chuangchuang Sun

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

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) allows data-efficient learning which is required in real world applications such as robotics. However, despite the impressive data-efficiency, MBRL does not achieve the final performance of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-19 Zhang-Wei Hong , Joni Pajarinen , Jan Peters

Ensuring both performance and safety is critical for autonomous systems operating in real-world environments. While safety filters such as Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) enforce constraints by modifying nominal controllers in real time,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-21 Aditya Singh , Aastha Mishra , Manan Tayal , Shishir Kolathaya , Pushpak Jagtap

In this paper we present the implementation of a Control Barrier Function (CBF) using a quadratic program (QP) formulation that provides obstacle avoidance for a robotic manipulator arm system. CBF is a control technique that has emerged…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Stephen McIlvanna , Nhat Nguyen Minh , Yuzhu Sun , Mien Van , Wasif Naeem

Control barrier functions (CBFs) offer an efficient framework for designing real-time safe controllers. However, CBF-based controllers can be short-sighted, resulting in poor performance, a behaviour which is aggravated in uncertain…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-16 Allan Andre do Nascimento , Antonis Papachristodoulou , Kostas Margellos

Model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) works well when experience can be collected cheaply and model-based RL is effective when system dynamics can be modeled accurately. However, both assumptions can be violated in real world problems such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-07 Mohak Bhardwaj , Ankur Handa , Dieter Fox , Byron Boots

The control barrier function (CBF) has become a fundamental tool in safety-critical systems design since its invention. Typically, the quadratic optimization framework is employed to accommodate CBFs, control Lyapunov functions (CLFs),…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-17 Junjun Xie , Liang Hu , Jiahu Qin , Jun Yang , Huijun Gao

Breaking safety constraints in control systems can lead to potential risks, resulting in unexpected costs or catastrophic damage. Nevertheless, uncertainty is ubiquitous, even among similar tasks. In this paper, we develop a novel adaptive…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-07-17 Shengbo Wang , Ke Li , Yin Yang , Yuting Cao , Tingwen Huang , Shiping Wen