English
Related papers

Related papers: Explicit Control Barrier Function-based Safety Fil…

200 papers

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

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) provide a principled framework for enforcing safety in control systems -- yet the certified safe operating region in practice is often conservative, especially under input bounds. In many applications,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Pio Ong , David E. J. van Wijk , Massimiliano de Sa , Joel W. Burdick , Aaron D. Ames

The safety of training task policies and their subsequent application using reinforcement learning (RL) methods has become a focal point in the field of safe RL. A central challenge in this area remains the establishment of theoretical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-02 Chenggang Wang , Xinyi Wang , Yutong Dong , Lei Song , Xinping Guan

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

Using control barrier functions (CBFs) as safety filters provides a computationally inexpensive yet effective method for constructing controllers in safety-critical applications. However, using CBFs requires the construction of a valid CBF,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Bolun Dai , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami

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 studies the dynamical properties of safety filters designed based on Control Barrier Functions (CBF). This mechanism, which is popular in safety-critical applications, takes a nominal controller and minimally modifies it to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-19 Pol Mestres , Shima Sadat Mousavi , Aaron D. Ames

Safety filters constructed from control barrier functions (CBFs) are commonly appended to pre-trained neural network controllers to enforce safety requirements. However, this decoupled design with hand-tuned, fixed CBF parameters often…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-27 Yang Zhao , Jungeun Lee , Jeong hwan Jeon , Sze Zheng Yong

The increasing complexity of control systems necessitates control laws that guarantee safety w.r.t. complex combinations of constraints. In this letter, we propose a framework to describe compositional safety specifications with control…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-05 Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

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 a fundamental requirement of control systems. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are proposed to ensure the safety of the control system by constructing safety filters or synthesizing control inputs. However, the safety guarantee…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-29 Manan Tayal , Hongchao Zhang , Pushpak Jagtap , Andrew Clark , Shishir Kolathaya

This tutorial paper presents recent work of the authors that extends the theory of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to address practical challenges in the synthesis of safe controllers for autonomous systems and robots. We present novel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-29 Kunal Garg , James Usevitch , Joseph Breeden , Mitchell Black , Devansh Agrawal , Hardik Parwana , Dimitra Panagou

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) aim to ensure safety by constraining the control input at each time step so that the system state remains within a desired safe region. This paper presents a framework for CBFs in stochastic systems in the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-20 Andrew Clark

In this paper, we study a safe control design for dynamical systems in the presence of uncertainty in a dynamical environment. The worst-case error approach is considered to formulate robust Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) in an…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Vahid Hamdipoor , Nader Meskin , Christos G. Cassandras

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) are an effective methodology to ensure safety and performative efficacy in real-time control applications such as power systems, resource allocation, autonomous vehicles, robotics, etc. This approach ensures…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-30 Samy Wu Fung , Levon Nurbekyan

This paper presents a safe controller synthesis of discrete-time stochastic systems using Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). The proposed condition allows the design of a safe controller synthesis that ensures system safety while avoiding…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-01-17 Sotaro Fushimi , Kenta Hoshino , Yuki Nishimura

In this paper, we investigate safety-critical control problem of discrete-time stochastic systems with incomplete information, where safety constraints must be enforced using state estimates obtained from noisy measurements. We develop an…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-15 Jianing Zhao , Zhuoting Cai , Xiang Yin

We propose new methods to synthesize control barrier function (CBF)-based safe controllers that avoid input saturation, which can cause safety violations. In particular, our method is created for high-dimensional, general nonlinear systems,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Simin Liu , Changliu Liu , John Dolan