Jorge Cortés

Professor

Cymer Corporation Endowed Chair





Equilibria and their stability do not depend on the control barrier function in safe optimization-based control
Y. Chen, P. Mestres, J. Cortés, E. Dall'Anese
IEEE Access, submitted


Abstract

Control barrier functions (CBFs) play a critical role in the design of safe optimization-based controllers for control-affine systems. Given a CBF associated with a desired ``safe" set, the typical approach consists in embedding CBF-based constraints into the optimization problem defining the control law to enforce forward invariance of the safe set. While this approach effectively guarantees safety for a given CBF, the CBF-based control law can introduce undesirable equilibrium points (i.e., points that are not equilibria of the original system); open questions remain on how the choice of CBF influences the number and locations of undesirable equilibria and, in general, the dynamics of the closed-loop system. This paper investigates how the choice of CBF impacts the dynamics of the closed-loop system and shows that: (i) The CBF does not affect the number, location, and (local) stability properties of the equilibria in the interior of the safe set; (ii) undesirable equilibria only appear on the boundary of the safe set; and, (iii) the number and location of undesirable equilibria for the closed-loop system do not depend of the choice of the CBF. Additionally, for the well-established safety filters and controllers based on both CBF and control Lyapunov functions (CLFs), we show that the stability properties of equilibria of the closed-loop system are independent of the choice of the CBF and of the associated extended class-K function.

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Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego
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