Robust Data-Driven Safe Control using Density Functions

Abstract: This paper presents a tractable framework for data-driven synthesis of robustly safe control laws. Given noisy experimental data and some priors about the structure of the system, the goal is to synthesize a state feedback law such that the trajectories of the closed loop system are guaranteed to avoid an unsafe set even in the presence of unknown but bounded disturbances (process noise). The main result of the paper shows that for polynomial dynamics, this problem can be reduced to a tractable convex optimization by combining elements from polynomial optimization and the theorem of alternatives. This optimization provides both a rational control law and a density function safety certificate. These results are illustrated with numerical examples.