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CEAS EuroGNC 2026

Control Barrier Functions on a Pseudo Control Level for Safe Flight Control
Simon Hafner Research Associate, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany.
Johannes Autenrieb Research Scientist, Department of Flight Dynamics and Simulation, Institute of Flight Systems, DLR (German Aerospace Center), Braunschweig, Germany.
Agnes Steinert Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany.
Florian Holzapfel Professor, Institute of Flight System Dynamics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany.
Abstract:
Control Barrier Function (CBF) have gained popularity in ensuring the safety of systems with complex control laws, specifically outside the aerospace community. This paper proposes an approach for adding CBF to a pseudocontrol-based control law to ensure, e.g., envelope protections of aircraft. Applying the safety filter at the pseudo control level rather than the control input level offers several advantages for applicability in the aerospace domain, including reduced execution time. The proposed algorithm is validated in simulation using a linear short-period ADMIRE fighter and a linear hexacopter model. The execution time of the three approaches is compared using a microcontroller.
Keywords: Control Barrier Function; Envelope Protections; Flight Control; Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion
 View PDF CEAS-GNC-2026-010 doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-010


Simon Hafner, Johannes Autenrieb, Agnes Steinert, Florian Holzapfel: Control Barrier Functions on a Pseudo Control Level for Safe Flight Control. Proceedings of the 2026 CEAS EuroGNC conference. Madrid, Spain. May 2026. doi: 10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-010.
BibTeX entry (UTF-8):

@Incollection{CEAS-GNC-2026-010,
    author = {Hafner, Simon and Autenrieb, Johannes and Steinert, Agnes and Holzapfel, Florian},
    title = {Control Barrier Functions on a Pseudo Control Level for Safe Flight Control},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 {CEAS EuroGNC} conference},
    address = {Madrid, Spain},
    month = may,
    year = {2026},
    doi = {10.82124/CEAS-GNC-2026-010}
}