In this paper, we propose a new class of Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) that help avoid collisions with kinematic (non-zero velocity) obstacles. While the current forms of CBFs have been successful in guaranteeing safety/collision avoidance with static obstacles, extensions for the dynamic case have seen limited success. Moreover, with the UGV models like the unicycle or the bicycle, applications of existing CBFs have been conservative in terms of control, i.e., steering/thrust control has not been possible under certain scenarios. Drawing inspiration from the classical use of collision cones for obstacle avoidance in trajectory planning, we introduce its novel CBF formulation with theoretical guarantees on safety for both the unicycle and bicycle models. The main idea is to ensure that the velocity of the obstacle w.r.t. the vehicle is always pointing away from the vehicle. Accordingly, we construct a constraint that ensures that the velocity vector always avoids a cone of vectors pointing at the vehicle. The efficacy of this new control methodology is later verified by Pybullet simulations on TurtleBot3 and F1Tenth.

翻译：本文针对无人地面车辆提出了一类新型控制屏障函数，用于规避运动（非零速度）障碍物。现有控制屏障函数虽能有效保障静态障碍物规避的安全性，但向动态场景的拓展效果有限。此外，对于独轮车或自行车等无人地面车辆模型，现有控制屏障函数的应用在控制层面存在保守性——即在特定场景下无法实现转向/推力控制。受轨迹规划中经典碰撞锥避障方法的启发，我们提出了具有理论安全性保障的新型控制屏障函数公式，适用于独轮车和自行车两种模型。核心思想是确保障碍物相对于车辆的速度始终指向远离车辆的方向。据此构建约束条件，使速度向量始终避开指向车辆的速度向量锥体。通过Pybullet仿真平台在TurtleBot3和F1Tenth平台上的验证，该新型控制方法的有效性得到证实。