Researcher profile

Hunmin Kim

Hunmin Kim contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

7 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Synergistic Simplex: Cooperative Runtime Assurance for Safety-Critical Autonomous Systems

Autonomous systems increasingly rely on machine-learning (ML) components for safety-critical tasks such as perception and control in autonomous vehicles (AVs). While ML enables essential capabilities, it inevitably exhibits long-tail faults that make it unsuitable for safety-critical tasks. Runtime assurance (RTA) mitigates this issue by pairing ML components with verifiable safety monitors, e.g., Control Simplex and Perception Simplex architectures. However, the limited performance of safety monitors remains a major bottleneck. The Synergistic Simplex (SS) architecture improves system performance by enabling bidirectional integration between ML components and safety monitors while preserving formal safety guarantees. The key innovation here is allowing safety monitors to use ML outputs, which is typically prohibited in RTA systems. We formally derive conditions under which this integration preserves safety and demonstrate the performance benefits. We present the design, analysis, and evaluation of SS for AV obstacle detection.

preprint2022arXiv

Path Integral Methods with Stochastic Control Barrier Functions

Safe control designs for robotic systems remain challenging because of the difficulties of explicitly solving optimal control with nonlinear dynamics perturbed by stochastic noise. However, recent technological advances in computing devices enable online optimization or sampling-based methods to solve control problems. For example, Control Barrier Functions (CBFs), a Lyapunov-like control algorithm, have been proposed to numerically solve convex optimizations that determine control input to stay in the safe set. Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) uses forward sampling of stochastic differential equations to solve optimal control problems online. Both control algorithms are widely used for nonlinear systems because they avoid calculating the derivatives of the nonlinear dynamic function. In this paper, we utilize Stochastic Control Barrier Functions (SCBFs) constraints to limit sample regions in the sample-based algorithm, ensuring safety in a probabilistic sense and improving sample efficiency with a stochastic differential equation. We provide a sampling complexity analysis for the required sample size of our algorithm and show that our algorithm needs fewer samples than the original MPPI algorithm does. Finally, we apply our algorithm to a path planning problem in a cluttered environment and compare the performance of the algorithms.

preprint2022arXiv

Protective Mission against a Highly Maneuverable Rogue Drone Using Defense Margin Strategy

The current paper studies a protective mission to defend a domain called the safe zone from a rogue drone invasion. We consider a one attacker and one defender drone scenario where only a noisy observation of the attacker at every time step is accessible to the defender. Directly applying strategies used in existing problems such as pursuit-evasion games are shown to be insufficient for our mission. We introduce a new concept of defense margin to complement an existing strategy and construct a control strategy that successfully solves our problem. We provide analytical proofs to point out the limitations of the existing strategy and how our defense margin strategy can be used to enhance performance. Simulation results show that our suggested strategy outperforms that of the existing strategy at least by 36.0 percentage points in terms of mission success.

preprint2022arXiv

Sampling Complexity of Path Integral Methods for Trajectory Optimization

The use of random sampling in decision-making and control has become popular with the ease of access to graphic processing units that can generate and calculate multiple random trajectories for real-time robotic applications. In contrast to sequential optimization, the sampling-based method can take advantage of parallel computing to maintain constant control loop frequencies. Inspired by its wide applicability in robotic applications, we calculate a sampling complexity result applicable to general nonlinear systems considered in the path integral method, which is a sampling-based method. The result determines the required number of samples to satisfy the given error bounds of the estimated control signal from the optimal value with the predefined risk probability. The sampling complexity result shows that the variance of the estimated control value is upper-bounded in terms of the expectation of the cost. Then we apply the result to a linear time-varying dynamical system with quadratic cost and an indicator function cost to avoid constraint sets.

preprint2020arXiv

A Safety Constrained Control Framework for UAVs in GPS Denied Environment

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) suffer from sensor drifts in GPS denied environments, which can lead to potentially dangerous situations. To avoid intolerable sensor drifts in the presence of GPS spoofing attacks, we propose a safety constrained control framework that adapts the UAV at a path re-planning level to support resilient state estimation against GPS spoofing attacks. The attack detector is used to detect GPS spoofing attacks based on the resilient state estimation and provides a switching criterion between the robust control mode and emergency control mode. To quantify the safety margin, we introduce the escape time which is defined as a safe time under which the state estimation error remains within a tolerable error with designated confidence. An attacker location tracker (ALT) is developed to track the location of the attacker and estimate the output power of the spoofing device by the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with sliding window outputs. Using the estimates from ALT, an escape controller (ESC) is designed based on the constrained model predictive controller (MPC) such that the UAV escapes from the effective range of the spoofing device within the escape time.

preprint2020arXiv

Distributed Robust Adaptive Frequency Control of Power Systems with Dynamic Loads

This paper investigates the frequency control of multi-machine power systems subject to uncertain and dynamic net loads. We propose distributed internal model controllers that coordinate synchronous generators and demand response to tackle the unpredictable nature of net loads. Frequency stability is formally guaranteed via Lyapunov analysis. Numerical simulations on the IEEE 68-bus test system demonstrate the effectiveness of the controllers.

preprint2020arXiv

Safety Constrained Multi-UAV Time Coordination: A Bi-level Control Framework in GPS Denied Environment

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) suffer from sensor drifts in GPS denied environments, which can cause safety issues. To avoid intolerable sensor drifts while completing the time-critical coordination task for multi-UAV systems, we propose a safety constrained bi-level control framework. The first level is the time-critical coordination level that achieves a consensus of coordination states and provides a virtual target which is a function of the coordination state. The second level is the safety-critical control level that is designed to follow the virtual target while adapting the attacked UAV(s) at a path re-planning level to support resilient state estimation. In particular, the time-critical coordination level framework generates the desired speed and position profile of the virtual target based on the multi-UAV cooperative mission by the proposed consensus protocol algorithm. The safety-critical control level is able to make each UAV follow its assigned path while detecting the attacks, estimating the state resiliently, and driving the UAV(s) outside the effective range of the spoofing device within the escape time. The numerical simulations of a three-UAV system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed safety constrained bi-level control framework.