Sufficient Conditions for Robust Safety in Differential Inclusions Using Barrier Functions

Abstract

In this brief paper we introduce a robust-safety notion for differential inclusions, and we propose a general framework to certify such a notion in terms of barrier functions. While existing literature studied only what we designate by uniform robust safety, in this paper, we make a clear distinction between the uniform and the non-uniform robust-safety notions. For both cases, we establish sufficient (infinitesimal) conditions on the nominal (unperturbed) system. That is, our conditions involve only the barrier function and the system's right-hand side. Our results allow for unbounded safety regions as well as nonsmooth barrier functions. Throughout the paper, simple examples are provided to illustrate our results.