ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Yiting Chen

ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Yiting Chen

Title: Equilibria and Stability of Control Barrier Function–Based Safety Methods

Presenter: Yiting Chen

Advisor: Professor Emiliano Dall'Anese

Chair: Professor Alex Olshevsky

Committee: Professor Emiliano Dall'Anese, Professor Jorge Cortes, Professor Christos Cassandras, Professor Alex Olshevsky

Google Scholar Profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mPgV8XIAAAAJ&hl=en

Abstract: Control barrier function (CBF)–based methods are widely used in feedback control to enforce constraints while preserving performance. When embedded in feedback, however, these methods induce internal dynamics that can fundamentally affect equilibrium selection and stability, even when feasibility is maintained. This prospectus studies such effects from a dynamical-systems perspective, with a focus on both static safety filters and dynamic safety-aware controllers.

We first analyze CBF–based safety filters and show that, for a fixed safe set, key equilibrium and boundary behavior are structurally independent of the specific CBF parametrization, highlighting fundamental limitations of CBF tuning as a design strategy. Next, we study safety-aware feedback optimization schemes, in which the optimizer is treated as a dynamical subsystem coupled with the plant. Building on recent work on safe gradient flows, we propose a feedback optimization controller that incorporates CBF constraints directly into the controller dynamics, rather than enforcing safety through an external static filter.