Multi-Agent Obstacle Avoidance using Velocity Obstacles and Control Barrier Functions

Velocity Obstacles (VO) methods form a paradigm for collision avoidance strategies among moving obstacles and agents. While VO methods perform well in simple multi-agent environments, they don't guarantee safety and can show overly conservative behavior in common situations. In this paper, we propose to combine a VO-strategy for guidance with a CBF-approach for safety, which overcomes the overly conservative behavior of VOs and formally guarantees safety. We validate our method in a baseline comparison study, using 2nd order integrator and car-like dynamics. Results support that our method outperforms the baselines w.r.t. path smoothness, collision avoidance, and success rates.

@article{roncero2025_2409.10117,
  title={ Multi-Agent Obstacle Avoidance using Velocity Obstacles and Control Barrier Functions },
  author={ Alejandro Sánchez Roncero and Rafael I. Cabral Muchacho and Petter Ögren },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.10117},
  year={ 2025 }
}