Safe Navigation in Uncertain Crowded Environments Using Risk Adaptive CVaR Barrier Functions

Robot navigation in dynamic, crowded environments poses a significant challenge due to the inherent uncertainties in the obstacle model. In this work, we propose a risk-adaptive approach based on the Conditional Value-at-Risk Barrier Function (CVaR-BF), where the risk level is automatically adjusted to accept the minimum necessary risk, achieving a good performance in terms of safety and optimization feasibility under uncertainty. Additionally, we introduce a dynamic zone-based barrier function which characterizes the collision likelihood by evaluating the relative state between the robot and the obstacle. By integrating risk adaptation with this new function, our approach adaptively expands the safety margin, enabling the robot to proactively avoid obstacles in highly dynamic environments. Comparisons and ablation studies demonstrate that our method outperforms existing social navigation approaches, and validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

@article{wang2025_2504.06513,
  title={ Safe Navigation in Uncertain Crowded Environments Using Risk Adaptive CVaR Barrier Functions },
  author={ Xinyi Wang and Taekyung Kim and Bardh Hoxha and Georgios Fainekos and Dimitra Panagou },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.06513},
  year={ 2025 }
}