Control Barrier Functions for Disjunctions of Signal Temporal Logic Tasks

Abstract

In this work we consider the control problem of systems that are subject to disjunctions of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) tasks. Motivated by existing approaches encoding the STL tasks utilizing time-varying control barrier functions (CBFs), we propose a continuously differentiable function for encoding the STL constraints that is defined as the composition of a smooth approximator of the max operator and a set of functions ensuring the satisfaction of the corresponding STL tasks with a desired robustness, and derive conditions for the choice of the class K function (when the latter is considered to be linear) to ensure that the proposed function is a CBF. Then, a control law ensuring the satisfaction of the STL task is found as a solution to a computationally efficient QP.