Abstraction-Based Symbolic Control Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Embedded Systems

Abstract

A control barrier function is commonly used for a safety-critical system. It enforces forward invariance with respect to a given safe set. On the other hand, abstraction-based synthesis with robustness has been investigated. In this letter, we introduce the notion of a “symbolic control barrier function” for the abstraction-based synthesis. The characteristics of the proposed method is that a conservative safe set is considered with an abstracted plant model. It is proved that both forward invariance and robustness are enforced on the physical plant.