Over the decades, kinematic controllers have proven to be practically useful for applications like set-point and trajectory tracking in robotic systems. To this end, we formulate a novel safety-critical paradigm for kinematic control in this paper. In particular, we extend the methodology of control barrier functions (CBFs) to kinematic equations governing robotic systems. We demonstrate a purely kinematic implementation of a velocity-based CBF, and subsequently introduce a formulation that guarantees safety at the level of dynamics. This is achieved through a new form CBFs that incorporate kinetic energy with the classical forms, thereby minimizing model dependence and conservativeness. The approach is then extended to underactuated systems. This method and the purely kinematic implementation are demonstrated in simulation on two robotic platforms: a 6-DOF robotic manipulator, and a cart-pole system.

中文翻译：

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机器人系统的安全关键运动控制

几十年来，运动学控制器已被证明对机器人系统中的设定点和轨迹跟踪等应用非常有用。为此，我们在本文中为运动学控制制定了一种新的安全关键范式。特别是，我们将控制屏障函数 (CBF) 的方法扩展到控制机器人系统的运动学方程。我们展示了基于速度的 CBF 的纯运动学实现，并随后引入了在动力学水平上保证安全的公式。这是通过将动能与经典形式相结合的新形式 CBF 实现的，从而最大限度地减少模型依赖性和保守性。然后将该方法扩展到欠驱动系统。