Collision Cone Control Barrier Functions (C3BF)

Introduction

This work presents a unified approach for collision avoidance using Collision-Cone Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) in both ground (UGV) and aerial (UAV) unmanned vehicles. We propose a novel CBF formulation inspired by collision cones, commonly used in trajectory planning, to ensure safety by constraining the relative velocity between the vehicle and the obstacle to always point away from each other. The efficacy of this approach is demonstrated through simulations and hardware implementations on the Turtlebot, Stoch-Jeep (Ackermann), and Crazyflie 2.1 quadrotor robot, showcasing its effectiveness in avoiding collisions with dynamic obstacles in both ground and aerial settings. The real-time controller is developed using CBF Quadratic Programs (QPs) formulation. Comparative analysis with existing CBF-QPs, particularly Higher-Order CBF (HOCBF), highlights the less conservative nature of the proposed approach. Overall, this research contributes to a novel control formation that can give a guarantee for collision avoidance in unmanned vehicles by modifying the control inputs from existing path-planning controllers, enhancing the vehicle’s maneuverability and safety in dynamic environments.

Simulation Results

Obstacle avoidance on UGVs (Unicycle & Bicycle Models)

Obstacle avoidance on UAV (Quadrotor Model)

Hardware Experiments

Obstacle avoidance on Turlebot (Unicycle Model)

Obstacle avoidance on Stoch-Jeep (Bicycle Model)

Obstacle avoidance on Crazyflie 2.1 (Quadrotor Model)</h3>

Citation

        @article{thontepu2022control,
          title={Control Barrier Functions in UGVs for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance: A Collision Cone Approach},
          author={Thontepu, Phani and Goswami, Bhavya Giri and Singh, Neelaksh and PI, Shyamsundar and Sundaram, Suresh and Katewa, Vaibhav and others},
          journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.11524},
          year={2022}
        }
        
        @article{tayal2023control,
          title={Control Barrier Functions in Dynamic UAVs for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance: A Collision Cone Approach},
          author={Tayal, Manan and Kolathaya, Shishir},
          journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.15871},
          year={2023}
        }
        @misc{goswami2023collision,
              title={Collision Cone Control Barrier Functions: Experimental Validation on UGVs for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance}, 
              author={Bhavya Giri Goswami and Manan Tayal and Karthik Rajgopal and Pushpak Jagtap and Shishir Kolathaya},
              year={2023},
              eprint={2310.10839},
              archivePrefix={arXiv},
              primaryClass={cs.RO}
        }
        

Related Papers

2023 December	Collision Cone Control Barrier Functions for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance in UGVs Phani Thontepu, Bhavya Giri Goswami, Manan Tayal, Neelaksh Singh, Shyam Sundar P I, Shyam Sundar M G, Suresh Sundaram, Vaibhav Katewa, and Shishir Kolathaya Indian Control Conference (ICC) 2023, Vishakhapatnam, India
2024 June	Polygonal Cone Control Barrier Functions (PolyC2BF) for safe navigation in cluttered environments Manan Tayal, and Shishir Kolathaya European Control Conference (ECC) 2024, Stockholm, Sweden
2024 July	Control Barrier Functions in Dynamic UAVs for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance: A Collision Cone Approach Manan Tayal, Rajpal Singh, Jishnu Keshavan, and Shishir Kolathaya American Control Conference (ACC) 2024, Toronto, Canada
2024 July	Collision Cone Control Barrier Functions: Experimental Validation on UGVs for Kinematic Obstacle Avoidance Bhavya Giri Goswami, Manan Tayal, Karthik Rajgopal, Pushpak Jagtap, and Shishir Kolathaya American Control Conference (ACC) 2024, Toronto, Canada

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