Limiting Kinetic Energy through Control Barrier Functions : Analysis and Experimental Validation

An energy-based Control Barrier Function (CBF) is used to limit kinetic energy of torque-controlled robots. The proposed CBF produces a safety-critical control action that bounds the kinetic energy of the manipulator by purely injecting damping in the underlying closed-loop system, not compromising its passivity and stability properties. We present an extensive experimental validation of the approach on a 7-Degree of Freedom (DoF) Franka Emika Panda robot.