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Safety-critical whole-body robot control demands reactive methods that ensure collision avoidance in real-time. Complementarity constraints and control barrier functions (CBF) have emerged as core tools for ensuring such safety constraints,…

This paper presents a hybrid safety-critical coordination architecture for multi-agent systems operating in dense environments. While control barrier functions (CBFs) provide formal safety guarantees, decentralized implementations typically…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-09 Johannes Autenrieb , Mark Spiller , Hyo-Sang Shin , Namhoon Cho

This paper introduces the notion of an Input Constrained Control Barrier Function (ICCBF), as a method to synthesize safety-critical controllers for non-linear control affine systems with input constraints. The method identifies a subset of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-15 Devansh Agrawal , 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 paper presents a general end-to-end framework for constructing robust and reliable layered safety filters that can be leveraged to perform dynamic collision avoidance over a broad range of applications using only local perception data.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Erina Yamaguchi , Ryan M. Bena , Gilbert Bahati , 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 critical systems involve the tight coupling between potentially conflicting control objectives and safety constraints. As a means of creating a formal framework for controlling systems of this form, and with a view toward automotive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Aaron D. Ames , Xiangru Xu , Jessy W. Grizzle , Paulo Tabuada

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

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

The integration of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in industrial environments, particularly warehouses, has revolutionized logistics and operational efficiency. However, ensuring the safety of human workers in dynamic, shared spaces remains…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-31 Seth Farrell , Chenghao Li , Hongzhan Yu , Ryo Yoshimitsu , Sicun Gao , Henrik I. Christensen

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

With the increasing emphasis on the safe autonomy for robots, model-based safe control approaches such as Control Barrier Functions have been extensively studied to ensure guaranteed safety during inter-robot interactions. In this paper, we…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Yiwei Lyu , Wenhao Luo , John M. Dolan

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

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) offer a powerful tool for enforcing safety specifications in control synthesis. This paper deals with the problem of constructing valid CBFs. Given a second-order system and any desired safety set with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-17 Mohammed Alyaseen , Nikolay Atanasov , Jorge Cortes

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

Modern autonomous systems, such as flying, legged, and wheeled robots, are generally characterized by high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics, which presents challenges for model-based safety-critical control design. Motivated by the success of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-21 Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar , Aaron D. Ames

Cooperative transport and manipulation of heavy or bulky payloads by multiple manipulators requires coordinated formation tracking, while simultaneously enforcing strict safety constraints in varying environments with limited communication…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Simiao Zhuang , Bingkun Huang , Zewen Yang

This paper introduces a novel safety-critical control method through the synthesis of control barrier functions (CBFs) for systems with high-relative-degree safety constraints. By extending the procedure of CBF backstepping, we propose…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-08-29 Laszlo Gacsi , Max H. Cohen , Tamas G. Molnar

This paper presents a control design method that achieves safety for systems with unmodeled dynamics at the plant input. The proposed method combines control barrier functions (CBFs) and integral quadratic constraints (IQCs). Simplified,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-05 Peter Seiler , Mrdjan Jankovic , Erik Hellstrom