Formal Intent-Based Trajectory Description Languages

This paper describes an improved version of our intent-related hierarchy of formal languages designed to describe aircraft trajectories. These languages allow a complete or partial specification of aircraft trajectories at different levels, and the extension of its features described in this paper allows their applicability to define more complex kind of missions, such as those of unmanned vehicles or military aircraft. This paper provides a complete description on lexicon, syntax, and graphical representation details for each language and shows their applicability through a set of clarifying examples of flight specifications with different granularity. The described language hierarchy has been proven as a suitable framework for describing aircraft trajectories with different levels of detail and for different applications. Its versatility and flexibility are demonstrated through a set of scenarios identifying characteristic operational examples.