Safety-Critical Control of Quadrotors with High-Order Control Barrier Functions

Modern autonomous drones must operate safely in complex and cluttered environments. While many existing collision avoidance methods assume that thrust commands can be executed instantaneously, real quadrotors are subject to actuator dynamics that introduce delays between the commanded and actual motor responses. Ignoring these dynamics can degrade safety and performance during aggressive maneuvers.

This project aims to develop a High-Order Control Barrier Function (HOCBF) framework that explicitly accounts for rotor-speed dynamics in the flight control loop. Students will design, implement, and experimentally validate safety-critical controllers on a real quadrotor platform. The project includes controller development, simulation in ROS 2 and MuJoCo, and deployment on embedded flight-control hardware.

Desired Skills

Students are not expected to have experience in every area, but familiarity with one or more of the following is desirable:

• Basic control systems (state-space, control barrier function)

• Experience with flight controllers (e.g., PX4, ArduPilot, Pixhawk) or embedded systems

• Hardware integration or electronics debugging

• Python and/or C++ programming, ROS 2 and Linux

• Experience with simulation tools (e.g., MuJoCo) is a plus

Students with strong motivation to learn are encouraged to apply even if they do not meet all of the above qualifications. Paper publication is expected for this project.

Application Window: now - 16th Sep, 2026