Toward Reachability-Based Controller Design

obotics has provided the motivation and inspi-ration for many innovations in planning and control. From nonholonomic motion planning [1] to probabilistic road maps [2], from cap-ture basins [3] to preimages [4] of obstacles to avoid, and from geometric nonlinear control [5], [6] to machine-learning methods in robotic control [7], there is a wide range of planning and control algorithms and methodologies that can be traced back to a perceived need or anticipated benefit in autonomous or semiauton-omous systems. Our research has also been inspired by problems in autonomous and semiautonomous systems. We have fo-cused on safety verification and controller synthesis to satisfy safety specifications as well as verification and con-troller synthesis for guaranteeing that desired targets are reached. Among a group of researchers at the interface o