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Providing safety guarantees for learning-based controllers is important for real-world applications. One approach to realizing safety for arbitrary control policies is safety filtering. If necessary, the filter modifies control inputs to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-18 Lukas Brunke , Siqi Zhou , Mingxuan Che , Angela P. Schoellig

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

We develop a novel adaptation-based technique for safe control design in the presence of multiple control barrier function (CBF) constraints. Specifically, we introduce an approach for synthesizing any number of candidate CBFs into one…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Mitchell Black , Dimitra Panagou

This study addresses the challenge of ensuring safe spacecraft proximity operations, focusing on collision avoidance between a chaser spacecraft and a complex-geometry target spacecraft under disturbances. To ensure safety in such…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-21 Hang Zhou , Tao Meng , Kun Wang , Chengrui Shi , Renhao Mao , Weijia Wang , Jiakun Lei

This paper considers the general problem of transitioning theoretically safe controllers to hardware. Concretely, we explore the application of control barrier functions (CBFs) to sampled-data systems: systems that evolve continuously but…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-14 Andrew Singletary , Yuxiao Chen , Aaron D. Ames

Safety remains a central challenge in control of dynamical systems, particularly when the boundaries of unsafe sets are complex (e.g., nonconvex, nonsmooth) or unknown. This paper proposes a learning-enabled framework for safety-critical…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-16 Shuo Liu , Zhe Huang , Jun Zeng , Koushil Sreenath , Calin A. Belta

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have emerged as a popular topic in safety critical control due to their ability to provide formal safety guarantees for dynamical systems. Despite their powerful capabilities, the determination of feasible…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-18 Ali Mesbah , Seid H. Pourtakdoust , Alireza Sharifi , Afshin Banazadeh

In multi-point contact systems, precise force control is crucial for achieving stable and safe interactions between robots and their environment. Thus, we demonstrate an admittance controller with auto-tuning that can be applied for these…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-10-03 Alexander Schperberg , Yuki Shirai , Xuan Lin , Yusuke Tanaka , Dennis Hong

A standard motion control with feedback of the output displacement cannot handle unforeseen contact with environment without penetrating into the soft, i.e. viscoelastic, materials or even damaging the fragile materials. Robotics and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-04-09 Michael Ruderman

To achieve general-purpose dexterous manipulation, robots must rapidly devise and execute contact-rich behaviors. Existing model-based controllers are incapable of globally optimizing in real-time over the exponential number of possible…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Sharanya Venkatesh , Bibit Bianchini , Alp Aydinoglu , William Yang , Michael Posa

Modern world models are becoming too complex to admit explicit dynamical descriptions. We study safety-critical contextual control, where a Planner must optimize a task objective using only feasibility samples from a black-box Simulator,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-22 Tongxin Li

Optimal control for safety-critical systems is often dependent on the conservativeness of constraints. Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) serve as a medium to represent such constraints, but constructing a minimally conservative CBF is a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-08 Tanmay Dokania , Yashwanth Kumar Nakka

Autonomous spacecraft inspection and docking missions require controllers that can guarantee safety under thrust constraints and uncertainty. Input-constrained control barrier functions (ICCBFs) provide a framework for safety certification…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-10 Minduli C. Wijayatunga , Richard Linares , Roberto Armellin

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

This paper considers safe control synthesis for dynamical systems with either probabilistic or worst-case uncertainty in both the dynamics model and the safety constraints. We formulate novel probabilistic and robust (worst-case) control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Kehan Long , Vikas Dhiman , Melvin Leok , Jorge Cortés , Nikolay Atanasov

Safety filters based on control barrier functions (CBFs) and high-order control barrier functions (HOCBFs) are often implemented through quadratic programs (QPs). In general, especially in the presence of multiple constraints, feasibility…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Shima Sadat Mousavi , Max H. Cohen , Pol Mestres , Aaron D. Ames

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

This paper proposes a Koopman-based linear model predictive control (LMPC) framework for safety-critical control of nonlinear discrete-time systems. Existing MPC formulations based on discrete-time control barrier functions (DCBFs) enforce…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-01 Shuo Liu , Liang Wu , Dawei Zhang , Jan Drgona , Calin. A. Belta

This paper introduces harmonic control Lyapunov barrier functions (harmonic CLBF) that aid in constrained control problems such as reach-avoid problems. Harmonic CLBFs exploit the maximum principle that harmonic functions satisfy to encode…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-27 Amartya Mukherjee , Ruikun Zhou , Haocheng Chang , Jun Liu

Safe operation is essential for deploying robots in human-centered 3D environments. Soft continuum manipulators provide passive safety through mechanical compliance, but still require active control to achieve reliable collision avoidance.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-23 Kiwan Wong , Maximillian Stölzle , Wei Xiao , Daniela Rus