Safety Filter Design for Articulated Frame Steering Vehicles In the Presence of Actuator Dynamics Using High-Order Control Barrier Functions

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel safety filter for articulated frame steering vehicles that accounts for actuator dynamics, using high-order control barrier functions and quadratic programming to ensure safety and feasibility.

Contribution

It introduces a new safety filter design with a parametric adaptive high-order control barrier function tailored for AFS vehicles with actuator dynamics.

Findings

The safety filter guarantees feasibility for AFS vehicles with actuator dynamics.

Numerical simulations confirm the effectiveness of the proposed safety filter.

The approach enhances safety in heavy-duty vehicle operations near operators.

Abstract

Articulated Frame Steering (AFS) vehicles are widely used in heavy-duty industries, where they often operate near operators and laborers. Therefore, designing safe controllers for AFS vehicles is essential. In this paper, we develop a Quadratic Program (QP)-based safety filter that ensures feasibility for AFS vehicles with affine actuator dynamics. To achieve this, we first derive the general equations of motion for AFS vehicles, incorporating affine actuator dynamics. We then introduce a novel High-Order Control Barrier Function (HOCBF) candidate with equal relative degrees for both system controls. Finally, we design a Parametric Adaptive HOCBF (PACBF) and an always-feasible, QP-based safety filter. Numerical simulations of AFS vehicle kinematics demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.