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

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The control Barrier function approach has been widely used for safe controller synthesis. By solving an online convex quadratic programming problem, an optimal safe controller can be synthesized implicitly in state-space. Since the solution…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-22 Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Antonis Papachristodoulou

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

This paper develops a smooth safety-filtering framework for nonlinear control-affine systems under limited perception. Classical Control Barrier Function (CBF) filters assume global availability of the safety function - its value and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-22 Lyes Smaili , Soulaimane Berkane

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

Hybrid dynamical systems are ubiquitous as practical robotic applications often involve both continuous states and discrete switchings. Safety is a primary concern for hybrid robotic systems. Existing safety-critical control approaches for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Shuo Yang , Yu Chen , Xiang Yin , George J. Pappas , Rahul Mangharam

We present a dual-barrier control barrier function (CBF) safety filter for real-time, safety-critical velocity control of holonomic robots operating in incrementally built occupancy grid maps. As a robot explores an unknown environment,…

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide an effective framework for enforcing safety in dynamical systems with scalar constraints. However, many safety constraints are more naturally expressed as matrix-valued conditions, such as positive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Samuel G. Gessow , Pio Ong , Aaron D. Ames , Brett T. Lopez

Control barrier functions provide a powerful means for synthesizing safety filters that ensure safety framed as forward set invariance. Key to CBFs' effectiveness is the simple inequality on the system dynamics: $\dot{h} \geq - \alpha(h)$.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-18 Pio Ong , Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

We consider the problem of designing controllers to guarantee safety in a class of nonlinear systems under uncertainties in the system dynamics and/or the environment. We define a class of uncertain control barrier functions (CBFs), and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-09-20 Vipul K. Sharma , S. Sivaranjani

The backup control barrier function (CBF) was recently proposed as a tractable formulation that guarantees the feasibility of the CBF quadratic programming (QP) via an implicitly defined control invariant set. The control invariant set is…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-04-26 Yuxiao Chen , Mrdjan Jankovic , Mario Santillo , Aaron D. Ames

This tutorial provides a critical review of the practical application of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) in robotic safety. While the theoretical foundations of CBFs are well-established, I identify a recurring gap between the mathematical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Taekyung Kim

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

This paper addresses the target-pursuit problem, aiming to ensure each pursuer's safety regarding collision avoidance, sensing range, and input saturation. An input-constrained CBF is proposed to dynamically regulate the pursuer's control,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-11 Yaosheng Deng , Junjie Gao , Jiaping Xiao , Mir Feroskhan

Safe control for inherently unstable systems such as quadrotors is crucial. Imposing multiple dynamic constraints simultaneously on the states for safety regulation can be a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a quadratic…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Mouhyemen Khan , Munzir Zafar , Abhijit Chatterjee

To navigate complex environments, robots must increasingly use high-dimensional visual feedback (e.g. images) for control. However, relying on high-dimensional image data to make control decisions raises important questions; particularly,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Mukun Tong , Charles Dawson , Chuchu Fan

This paper proposes a safety controller for control-affine nonlinear systems with unmodelled dynamics and disturbances to improve closed-loop robustness. Uncertainty estimation-based control barrier functions (CBFs) are utilized to ensure…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-15 Ersin Daş , Skylar X. Wei , Joel W. Burdick

This article presents a closed-form adaptive controlbarrier-function (CBF) approach for satisfying state constraints in systems with parametric uncertainty. This approach uses a sampled-data recursive-least-squares algorithm to estimate the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-11-21 Ricardo Gutierrez , Jesse B. Hoagg

Grid-forming (GFM) converters face significant challenges in limiting current during transient grid events while preserving their grid-forming behavior. This paper offers an elegant solution to the problem with a priori guarantees,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-14 Michael Schneeberger , Silvia Mastellone , Florian Dörfler

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) with assured satisfaction of hard state constraints during training has recently received a lot of attention. Safety filters, e.g., based on control barrier functions (CBFs), provide a promising way for safe…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-08-30 Yikun Cheng , Pan Zhao , Naira Hovakimyan

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a simple yet effective way for safe control synthesis. Recently, work has been done using differentiable optimization (diffOpt) based methods to systematically construct CBFs for static obstacle…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-01-25 Bolun Dai , Rooholla Khorrambakht , Prashanth Krishnamurthy , Farshad Khorrami