# Collision Avoidance and Geofencing for Fixed-wing Aircraft with Control Barrier Functions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02508 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02508/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Mar 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Demonstrating ViSafe: Vision-enabled Safety for High-speed Detect and Avoid](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03694/) (2025)
- [Barrier Function Overrides For Non-Convex Fixed Wing Flight Control and Self-Driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05548/) (2025)
- [Aircraft Collision Avoidance Systems: Technological Challenges and Solutions on the Path to Regulatory Acceptance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20916/) (2025)
- [PCARNN-DCBF: Minimal-Intervention Geofence Enforcement for Ground Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15522/) (2025)
- [Safer Trajectory Planning with CBF-guided Diffusion Model for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17527/) (2026)
- [Data-Driven Time-Varying Control Barrier Functions for Adaptive Safe-Set Learning with Online Decremental Support Vector Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19366/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Safety-critical failures often have fatal consequences in aerospace control. Control systems on aircraft, therefore, must ensure the strict satisfaction of safety constraints, preferably with formal guarantees of safe behavior. This paper establishes the safety-critical control of fixed-wing aircraft in collision avoidance and geofencing tasks. A control framework is developed wherein a run-time assurance (RTA) system modulates the nominal flight controller of the aircraft whenever necessary to prevent it from colliding with other aircraft or crossing a boundary (geofence) in space. The RTA is formulated as a safety filter using control barrier functions (CBFs) with formal guarantees of safe behavior. CBFs are constructed and compared for a nonlinear kinematic fixed-wing aircraft model. The proposed CBF-based controllers showcase the capability of safely executing simultaneous collision avoidance and geofencing, as demonstrated by simulations on the kinematic model and a high-fidelity dynamical model.