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Safety-critical control is a crucial aspect of modern systems, and Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have gained popularity as the framework of choice for ensuring safety. However, implementing a CBF requires exact knowledge of the true…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-26 Rahal Nanayakkara , Aaron D. Ames , Paulo Tabuada

We present a computational framework for synthesizing a single smooth Lyapunov function that certifies both asymptotic stability and safety. We show that the existence of a strictly compatible pair of control barrier and control Lyapunov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Jun Liu , Maxwell Fitzsimmons

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have recently become a powerful method for rendering desired safe sets forward invariant in single- and multi-agent systems. In the multi-agent case, prior literature has considered scenarios where all…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-10 James Usevitch , Dimitra Panagou

This paper investigates the distributed safety critical control for multi-agent systems (MASs) in the presence of uncontrollable agents with uncertain behaviors. To ensure system safety, the control barrier function (CBF) is employed in…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-22 Yuzhang Peng , Wei Wang , Jiaqi Yan , Mengze Yu

In this paper, we address the problem of synthesizing safe and stabilizing controllers for nonlinear systems subject to complex safety specifications and input constraints. We introduce the Universal Barrier Function (UBF), a single…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-04 Vrushabh Zinage , Efstathios Bakolas

Control barrier function (CBF) safety filters emerged as a popular framework to certify and modify potentially unsafe control inputs, for example, provided by a reinforcement learning agent or a non-expert user. Typical CBF safety filter…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-04 Lukas Brunke , Siqi Zhou , Angela P. Schoellig

We revisit the problem explored in [1] of guaranteeing satisfaction of multiple simultaneous state constraints applied to a single-input, single-output plant consisting of a chain of n integrators subject to input limitations. For this…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-24 Peter A. Fisher , Anuradha M. Annaswamy

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

Safely navigating around obstacles while respecting the dynamics, control, and geometry of the underlying system is a key challenge in robotics. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) generate safe control policies by considering system dynamics…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Yi-Hsuan Chen , Shuo Liu , Wei Xiao , Calin Belta , Michael Otte

A common assumption on the deployment of safeguarding controllers on the digital platform is that high sampling frequency translates to a small violation of safety. This paper investigates and formalizes this assumption through the lens of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-04 Gilbert Bahati , Pio Ong , Aaron D. Ames

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

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

We study the problem of co-designing control barrier functions (CBF) and linear state feedback controllers for continuous-time linear systems. We achieve this by means of a single semi-definite optimization program. Our formulation can…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-19 Han Wang , Kostas Margellos , Antonis Papachristodoulou , Claudio De Persis

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

Set invariance techniques such as control barrier functions (CBFs) can be used to enforce time-varying constraints such as keeping a safe distance from dynamic objects. However, existing methods for enforcing time-varying constraints often…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-19 Yitaek Kim , Christoffer Sloth

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

The problem of safely learning and controlling a dynamical system - i.e., of stabilizing an originally (partially) unknown system while ensuring that it does not leave a prescribed 'safe set' - has recently received tremendous attention in…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-10-10 Jafar Abbaszadeh Chekan , Cedric Langbort

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 Lyapunov functions (CLFs) and control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used tools for synthesizing controllers subject to stability and safety constraints. Paired with online optimization, they provide stabilizing control actions…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Hongkai Dai , Frank Permenter

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