arXiv Machine Learning

Learning Reachability-Based Safety Representations for Real-Time Robot Navigation in Unknown and Dynamic Environments

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

VertexCBF: Improving Neural Control Barrier Functions via Vertex-Restricted Control Search

VertexCBF is a framework that learns neural control barrier functions (CBFs) by approximating the stationary Hamilton–Jacobi value function with a neural network trained through physics‑informed and sparsely supervised learning. It exploits control‑affine dynamics and a convex polytope control set to generate supervision points via GPU‑parallel vertex‑restricted tree search, ensuring the learned CBF never exceeds the specified constraint function. The method was evaluated on 15 systems, outperforming baselines by recovering larger safe sets, and demonstrated on a mobile robot that safely avoids pedestrians using a neural CBF trained with this approach.

By Bojan Deraji\'c, Sebastian Bernhard, Wolfgang H\"onig
arXiv AI
6d ago

AegisFlow: Training-Free Non-Myopic Path-Safe Guided Flow Matching

AegisFlow is a training‑free framework that guides generative models, such as diffusion and flow matching, along safe paths by formulating the problem as a global optimal control task. It incorporates a time‑varying barrier function into the cost functional, enabling non‑myopic enforcement of constraints throughout the entire generative trajectory. Experiments show that AegisFlow outperforms existing methods in text‑guided image manipulation and robotic planning, achieving a better balance between target alignment and constraint satisfaction.

By Kunpeng Liu, Boshi Zhang, Keyou You
arXiv AI
Sep 25

CrossSafe: Towards Cross-Embodiment Latent Safety Filters

CrossSafe proposes embodiment-conditioned safety filtering that uses a Hamilton‑Jacobi reachability value function shared across robots while conditioning on each robot’s morphology and kinematics via a morphology‑aware latent representation. The method performs reachability analysis directly in latent space, enabling a single policy trained on multiple bimanual robot embodiments and manipulation tasks to generalize zero‑shot to a held‑out embodiment and reduce collision rates. Experiments on five embodiments and five tasks demonstrate that training with more embodiments improves generalization.

By Ihab Tabbara, Yuxuan Yang, Hussein Sibai
arXiv AI
Sep 18

Coding Agents with an Obstacle-Aware Harness for Safe Robot Manipulation

The paper introduces SafeHarness, an obstacle‑aware framework that improves the safety of coding agents for robot manipulation. By decomposing tasks into route planning and contact execution, the harness enables the agent to prioritize collision avoidance, achieving 71.9% task success and 87.5% collision avoidance—significantly better than prior methods. The study demonstrates that safety constraints can be effectively integrated into language‑model‑driven robot controllers.

By Bingxin Xu, Yuzhang Shang, Zhen Dong, Emilio Ferrara