Control Barrier Functions

Control Barrier Functions are safety certificates that can be used to design add-on control units that filter the control action provided to the system. The objective is to modify the input command as little as possible while simultaneously ensuring that the controlled system satisfies predetermined safety guarantees.

Although relatively recent compared to other constrained control strategies, Control Barrier Functions have been very successful in practical applications and continue to grow in popularity due to a unique combination of high performance and low computational complexity. Nevertheless, additional research is needed to bring this framework to full maturity.

Original artwork by Michele Carminati, commissioned by Marco M. Nicotra.

Systematic Design of CBFs

One of the main drawbacks of the CBF framework is the absence of a systematic approach for constructing Control Barrier Functions for constrained systems. By investigating the parallels between CBFs and Reference Governors, we propose a systematic approach to build CBFs starting from well-established results in RG literature.

Students: Victor Freire

Funding: NSF CMMI-DCSD (Award Number: 2411667)