Safety-Critical Control for Automated Trucks

In collaboration with Navistar, Inc., we designed and experimentally validated safety-critical controllers for heavy-duty automated trucks operating on public highways (estimated TRL 5–6). The project focused on improving the robustness of Control Barrier Function (CBF)-based controllers against real-world uncertainties such as sensor noise, communication delays, and aerodynamic disturbances.

Key contributions:

Disturbance observer-based CBFs to compensate dynamic uncertainties in real time
Input-to-state safe CBFs providing formal robustness guarantees
Hardware validation on a Class-8 truck platoon on public highways

References

2023

IEEE TCST

Control barrier functions and input-to-state safety with application to automated vehicles

Anil Alan, Andrew J. Taylor, Chaozhe R. He, and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2023

DOI Bib

@article{alan2023cbf_iss,
  title = {Control barrier functions and input-to-state safety with application to automated vehicles},
  author = {Alan, Anil and Taylor, Andrew J. and He, Chaozhe R. and Ames, Aaron D. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology},
  volume = {31},
  number = {6},
  pages = {2744--2759},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/TCST.2023.3286090}
}

IEEE L-CSS

Disturbance observers for robust safety-critical control with control barrier functions

Anil Alan, Tamás G. Molnár, Ersin Daş, and 2 more authors

IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2023

Best Student Paper Award DOI Bib

Best Student Paper Award, ACC 2023

@article{alan2023disturbance,
  title = {Disturbance observers for robust safety-critical control with control barrier functions},
  author = {Alan, Anil and Moln{\'a}r, Tam{\'a}s G. and Da{\c{s}}, Ersin and Ames, Aaron D. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  volume = {7},
  pages = {1123--1128},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2022.3228927}
}

IEEE TIV

Integrating safety with performance in connected automated truck control: experimental validation

Anil Alan, Chaozhe R. He, Tamás G. Molnár, and 3 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2023

DOI Bib

@article{alan2023integrating,
  title = {Integrating safety with performance in connected automated truck control: experimental validation},
  author = {Alan, Anil and He, Chaozhe R. and Moln{\'a}r, Tam{\'a}s G. and Mathew, Johaan C. and Bell, Aaron H. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles},
  volume = {9},
  number = {1},
  pages = {3075--3088},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/TIV.2023.3340807}
}

2022

IEEE L-CSS

Safe controller synthesis with tunable input-to-state safe control barrier functions

Anil Alan, Andrew J. Taylor, Chaozhe R. He, and 2 more authors

IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2022

DOI Bib

@article{alan2022safe,
  title = {Safe controller synthesis with tunable input-to-state safe control barrier functions},
  author = {Alan, Anil and Taylor, Andrew J. and He, Chaozhe R. and Orosz, G{\'a}bor and Ames, Aaron D.},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  volume = {6},
  pages = {908--913},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2021.3086854}
}