Adaptive robust safety‐critical control of switched systems via single barrier function

Summary This paper addresses the problem of adaptive robust safety‐critical control (ARSCC) for switched systems, where the safety of subsystems is not necessary. A novel ARSCC framework and an executable algorithm are presented to solve the ARSCC problem by finding a switching signal and controllers of subsystems. To estimate uncertainties, a novel switched piecewise‐constant adaptive law is presented, which guarantees a pre‐computable estimation error boundary. A single barrier function (SBF) method is proposed to ensure safety of switched systems with uncertainties, where the safety of subsystems is satisfied only in some subregion of a given safe set, instead of the whole safe set. Based on the SBF method, a novel state‐dependent switching law possessing different dwell times for different subsystems, is established to orchestrate the switching among potentially unsafe subsystems. As a special case of the SBF method, a common barrier function method is presented to achieve safety of switched systems with uncertainties under switching signals with given dwell times. In addition, some sufficient conditions are derived to obtain safety and asymptotic stability for switched systems with uncertainties by combining SBF and single Lyapunov function. Finally, a switched RLC circuit system is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.