An Observer-based Switching Algorithm for Safety under Sensor Denial-of-Service Attacks

Abstract: The design of safe-critical control algorithms for systems under Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on the system output is studied in this work. We aim to address scenarios where attack-mitigation approaches are not feasible, and the system needs to maintain safety under adversarial attacks. We propose an attack-recovery strategy by designing a switching observer and characterizing bounds in the error of a state estimation scheme by specifying tolerable limits on the time length of attacks. Then, we propose a switching control algorithm that renders forward invariant a set for the observer. Thus, by satisfying the error bounds of the state estimation, we guarantee that the safe set is rendered conditionally invariant with respect to a set of initial conditions. A numerical example illustrates the efficacy of the approach.