Independence of Closed-Loop Equilibria and Stability from the Choice of Control Barrier Function for a Given Safe Set

Control barrier functions (CBFs) play a critical role in the design of safe optimization-based controllers for control-affine systems. Given a CBF associated with a given, predefined ``safe'' set, the typical approach consists in embedding CBF-based constraints into the optimization problem defining the control law to enforce forward invariance of the safe set. While this approach effectively guarantees safety for a given CBF, the CBF-based control law can introduce undesirable equilibrium points (i.e., points that are not equilibria of the original system). Given that there exist many different CBFs associated with a given fixed safe set, open questions remain on how the choice of CBF influences the number and locations of undesirable equilibria and, in general, the dynamics of the closed-loop system. This paper investigates how the choice of CBF impacts the dynamics of the closed-loop system and shows that: (i) The choice of CBF does not affect the number, location, and (local) stability properties of the equilibria in the interior of the safe set; (ii) undesirable equilibria only appear on the boundary of the safe set; and, (iii) the number and location of undesirable equilibria for the closed-loop system do not depend of the choice of the CBF. Additionally, for the well-established textitsafety filters, we show that the stability properties of equilibria of the closed-loop system are independent of the choice of the CBF and of the associated extended class-K function, provided that the CBFs are chosen from the same equivalence class.