SC3BF: Shifted Collision Cone Control Barrier Function for Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance

arXiv:2610.08332v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The collision cone used by velocity-space control barrier functions is conservative: it rejects every relative velocity aimed into an obstacle, however slow. We propose the shifted collision-cone CBF (SC3BF), which adds a state-dependent allowance to the cone condition, so the robot may approach the obstacle at a rate that grows with distance and with its own speed. SC3BF is enforced by an ordinary quadratic program, and its safe set is forward invariant under bounded inputs without a minimum forward speed or a clearance margin. We prove that a nonzero allowance preserving safety always exists, and derive one in closed form. Against three velocity-space baselines on a kinematic bicycle among up to 100 moving obstacles, SC3BF reaches the goal more often and modifies the nominal input less than half as much.

Source: arXiv cs.RO | 2026-10-07