Probabilistic Control Barrier Functions for Systems with State Estimation Uncertainty using Sub-Gaussian Concentration

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Echigo, Kazuya, van Wijk, David E. J., Mestres, Pol, Daş, Ersin, Burdick, Joel W., Ames, Aaron D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Echigo, Kazuya
van Wijk, David E. J.
Mestres, Pol
Daş, Ersin
Burdick, Joel W.
Ames, Aaron D.
author_facet Echigo, Kazuya
van Wijk, David E. J.
Mestres, Pol
Daş, Ersin
Burdick, Joel W.
Ames, Aaron D.
contents Safety-critical control systems, such as spacecraft performing proximity operations, must provide formal safety guarantees despite stochastic uncertainties from state estimation and unmodeled dynamics. Although Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have been extended to stochastic systems, existing approaches typically face a trade-off between the tightness of probabilistic guarantees and computational tractability. This paper presents a particle-based probabilistic CBF framework that overcomes this limitation by exploiting the sub-Gaussian structure of the barrier function increment under Gaussian uncertainties. We establish that Gaussian uncertainties propagating through Lipschitz-continuous control-affine dynamics preserve sub-Gaussianity of the barrier function increment, with explicit tail bounds. Leveraging this structure, we derive finite-sample bounds on the approximation error between particle-based Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) estimates and ground-truth probabilistic constraints; applying this yields a tractable optimization problem formulation with finite-sample safety certificates. We show through numerical experiments how the proposed approach provides tight yet provably valid probabilistic safety guarantees.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_08831
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Probabilistic Control Barrier Functions for Systems with State Estimation Uncertainty using Sub-Gaussian Concentration
Echigo, Kazuya
van Wijk, David E. J.
Mestres, Pol
Daş, Ersin
Burdick, Joel W.
Ames, Aaron D.
Systems and Control
Safety-critical control systems, such as spacecraft performing proximity operations, must provide formal safety guarantees despite stochastic uncertainties from state estimation and unmodeled dynamics. Although Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) have been extended to stochastic systems, existing approaches typically face a trade-off between the tightness of probabilistic guarantees and computational tractability. This paper presents a particle-based probabilistic CBF framework that overcomes this limitation by exploiting the sub-Gaussian structure of the barrier function increment under Gaussian uncertainties. We establish that Gaussian uncertainties propagating through Lipschitz-continuous control-affine dynamics preserve sub-Gaussianity of the barrier function increment, with explicit tail bounds. Leveraging this structure, we derive finite-sample bounds on the approximation error between particle-based Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) estimates and ground-truth probabilistic constraints; applying this yields a tractable optimization problem formulation with finite-sample safety certificates. We show through numerical experiments how the proposed approach provides tight yet provably valid probabilistic safety guarantees.
title Probabilistic Control Barrier Functions for Systems with State Estimation Uncertainty using Sub-Gaussian Concentration
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08831