Safe Learning & Trustworthy Autonomy

We develop learning-based control and planning frameworks that enable autonomous systems to operate safely and reliably in uncertain, dynamic environments. Our research integrates reinforcement learning, safety-critical control, uncertainty quantification, and risk-aware decision-making to provide trustworthy autonomy with formal safety guarantees.

Risk-certified, event-triggered replanning for navigation among moving obstacles
Control barrier function safety filters for mobile robots and multi-robot teams
Learning-based disturbance estimation with provable robustness
Stochastic safety guarantees for systems that rely on unreliable communication

Representative publications

Lab members are in bold. ★ PhD student, ♦ Master's student, † equal contribution. The full list is on the Publications page.

2026

CoRL

Adaptive Risk-Certified Event-Triggered Replanning for Dynamic Navigation

Richie R. Suganda^★ and Bin Hu

In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Robot Learning (Acceptance Rate: 32.8%) (CoRL), 2026

Graph Bib PDF Project

@inproceedings{suganda2026adaptive,
  title = {Adaptive Risk-Certified Event-Triggered Replanning for Dynamic Navigation},
  author = {Suganda★, Richie R. and Hu, Bin},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Robot Learning (Acceptance Rate: 32.8%)},
  year = {2026},
  address = {Austin, TX, USA},
}

IEEE RAL

Neural-ESO: A Dual-Pathway Architecture for Provably Robust Learning-Based Control

Fan Zhang, Richie R. Suganda^★, Jinfeng Chen, Wenhua Liu, Hantao Fu, Bin Hu, and Qin Lin

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (IEEE RAL), 2026

Graph Bib PDF Demo

@article{zhang2026neural,
  title = {Neural-ESO: A Dual-Pathway Architecture for Provably Robust Learning-Based Control},
  author = {Zhang, Fan and Suganda★, Richie R. and Chen, Jinfeng and Liu, Wenhua and Fu, Hantao and Hu, Bin and Lin, Qin},
  journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  year = {2026},
}

IROS

Formation-Aware Adaptive Conformalized Perception for Safe Leader-Follower Multi-Robot Systems

Richie R. Suganda^★ and Bin Hu

In Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (Acceptance Rate: 36%) (IROS), Sep 2026

Graph Bib PDF Project

@inproceedings{suganda2026formation,
  title = {Formation-Aware Adaptive Conformalized Perception for Safe Leader-Follower Multi-Robot Systems},
  author = {Suganda★, Richie R. and Hu, Bin},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (Acceptance Rate: 36%)},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  address = {Pittsburgh, PA, USA},
}

MECH

Unified disturbance-aware safe kinematic control for closed-architecture robots

Fan Zhang, Jinfeng Chen, Joseph J. B. Mvogo Ahanda, Hanz Richter, Ge Lv, Bin Hu, and Qin Lin

Mechatronics (MECH), 2026

Graph Bib PDF

@article{zhang2026disturbance,
  title = {Unified disturbance-aware safe kinematic control for closed-architecture robots},
  author = {Zhang, Fan and Chen, Jinfeng and Mvogo Ahanda, Joseph J. B. and Richter, Hanz and Lv, Ge and Hu, Bin and Lin, Qin},
  journal = {Mechatronics},
  volume = {119},
  pages = {103584},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  doi = {10.1016/j.mechatronics.2026.103584},
}

2025

ICRA

Distributed Perception Aware Safe Leader Follower System via Control Barrier Methods

Richie R Suganda^★, Tony Tran^♦, Miao Pan, Lei Fan, Qin Lin, and Bin Hu

In Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (Acceptance Rate: 38.67%) (ICRA), 2025

Graph Bib PDF Project

@inproceedings{suganda2024distributed,
  title = {Distributed Perception Aware Safe Leader Follower System via Control Barrier Methods},
  author = {Suganda★, Richie R and Tran♦, Tony and Pan, Miao and Fan, Lei and Lin, Qin and Hu, Bin},
  booktitle = {Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (Acceptance Rate: 38.67%)},
  year = {2025},
  address = {Atlanta, US},
}

2024

IEEE CSL

Quadrotor Fault-Tolerant Control at High Speed: A Model-Based Extended State Observer for Mismatched Disturbance Rejection Approach

Jinfeng Chen, Fan Zhang, Bin Hu, and Qin Lin

IEEE Control Systems Letters (IEEE CSL), 2024

Bib

@article{chen2024quadrotor,
  title = {Quadrotor Fault-Tolerant Control at High Speed: A Model-Based Extended State Observer for Mismatched Disturbance Rejection Approach},
  author = {Chen, Jinfeng and Zhang, Fan and Hu, Bin and Lin, Qin},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  volume = {8},
  pages = {2895--2900}
}

2021

ACC

On a notion of stochastic zeroing barrier function

Tua A Tamba, Bin Hu, and Yul Y Nazaruddin

In 2021 American Control Conference (ACC), 2021

Bib

@inproceedings{tamba2021notion,
  title = {On a notion of stochastic zeroing barrier function},
  author = {Tamba, Tua A and Hu, Bin and Nazaruddin, Yul Y},
  booktitle = {2021 American Control Conference},
  pages = {1318--1321},
  year = {2021},
  organization = {IEEE},
  address = {New Orleans, LA, USA}
}

2019

AUTOM

Co-design of safe and efficient networked control systems in factory automation with state-dependent wireless fading channels

Bin Hu, Yebin Wang, Philip V Orlik, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, and Jianlin Guo

Automatica (AUTOM), 2019

Bib

@article{hu2019co,
  title = {Co-design of safe and efficient networked control systems in factory automation with state-dependent wireless fading channels},
  author = {Hu, Bin and Wang, Yebin and Orlik, Philip V and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Guo, Jianlin},
  journal = {Automatica},
  volume = {105},
  pages = {334--346},
  year = {2019},
  publisher = {Pergamon}
}

2015

IEEE TAC

Distributed switching control to achieve almost sure safety for leader-follower vehicular networked systems

Bin Hu and Michael D Lemmon

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (IEEE TAC), 2015

Bib

@article{hu2015distributed,
  title = {Distributed switching control to achieve almost sure safety for leader-follower vehicular networked systems},
  author = {Hu, Bin and Lemmon, Michael D},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control},
  volume = {60},
  number = {12},
  pages = {3195--3209},
  year = {2015},
  publisher = {IEEE}
}