Learning Safety-Guaranteed, Non-Greedy Control Barrier Functions Using Reinforcement Learning
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917236876247040 |
|---|---|
| author | Wijayatunga, Minduli Wallace, Nathan Sukkarieh, Salah Armellin, Roberto |
| author_facet | Wijayatunga, Minduli Wallace, Nathan Sukkarieh, Salah Armellin, Roberto |
| contents | Spacecraft rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) pose safety risks to high-value assets, so formal safety guarantees are critical. Yet conservative safety controllers can reduce mission efficiency. We propose a unified two-stage reinforcement learning (RL) framework that addresses two complementary limitations of Input-Constrained Control Barrier Functions (ICCBFs) for safety-critical, fuel-limited spacecraft control. Given a certified safe set S, ICCBFs guarantee forward invariance of an inner set C* under input bounds, but the resulting per-step quadratic programme (QP) is greedy and fuel-inefficient within C*, and recoverable states outside C* are conservatively discarded. Stage 1 learns state-dependent class-K-infinity parameters that adapt ICCBF/CLF decay rates, embedding long-horizon cost awareness while preserving invariance in C*. Stage 2 learns a residual barrier h_RL(x) that certifies recoverability for a subset of S minus C*. At run time, the controller selects the appropriate barrier formulation (Stage 1 or Stage 2) and solves a lightweight ZOH QP. Both stages are trained with PPO using rewards that penalise constraint violations, control effort, and task metrics. We evaluate three benchmarks: cruise control, spacecraft rendezvous with a rotating target, and inspection that maximises observability subject to keep-in and keep-out zone constraints. Across test cases, the method reduces median fuel relative to ICCBF baselines by 12 to 25 percent and increases the fraction of trajectories that remain in S by 7 to 8 percent, while retaining real-time QP complexity. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_00366 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Learning Safety-Guaranteed, Non-Greedy Control Barrier Functions Using Reinforcement Learning Wijayatunga, Minduli Wallace, Nathan Sukkarieh, Salah Armellin, Roberto Optimization and Control Spacecraft rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) pose safety risks to high-value assets, so formal safety guarantees are critical. Yet conservative safety controllers can reduce mission efficiency. We propose a unified two-stage reinforcement learning (RL) framework that addresses two complementary limitations of Input-Constrained Control Barrier Functions (ICCBFs) for safety-critical, fuel-limited spacecraft control. Given a certified safe set S, ICCBFs guarantee forward invariance of an inner set C* under input bounds, but the resulting per-step quadratic programme (QP) is greedy and fuel-inefficient within C*, and recoverable states outside C* are conservatively discarded. Stage 1 learns state-dependent class-K-infinity parameters that adapt ICCBF/CLF decay rates, embedding long-horizon cost awareness while preserving invariance in C*. Stage 2 learns a residual barrier h_RL(x) that certifies recoverability for a subset of S minus C*. At run time, the controller selects the appropriate barrier formulation (Stage 1 or Stage 2) and solves a lightweight ZOH QP. Both stages are trained with PPO using rewards that penalise constraint violations, control effort, and task metrics. We evaluate three benchmarks: cruise control, spacecraft rendezvous with a rotating target, and inspection that maximises observability subject to keep-in and keep-out zone constraints. Across test cases, the method reduces median fuel relative to ICCBF baselines by 12 to 25 percent and increases the fraction of trajectories that remain in S by 7 to 8 percent, while retaining real-time QP complexity. |
| title | Learning Safety-Guaranteed, Non-Greedy Control Barrier Functions Using Reinforcement Learning |
| topic | Optimization and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00366 |