An advanced 3D algorithm for automatic separation assurance systems

Hazardous collision situations among multiple aircraft could arise in future air transport system more often than today, since traffic density is predicted to hugely increase. An Automatic Conflict Resolution Algorithm is presented in this paper, which can provide automatic aircraft separation assurance for next generation air traffic control systems. Once a conflict arising with one or more aircraft has been detected, the proposed algorithm computes a safe flight trajectory to maintain separation with other traffic. The algorithm has been conceived for installation on-board autonomous aircraft because it performs required decision-making process for conflict detection and generates commands directly to the autopilot for conflict resolution. The algorithm is not rule-based but uses an efficient analytical solution to detect the conflicts, thus resulting suitable for real-time applications. Moreover, the proposed strategy for generating the conflict resolution maneuver minimizes the deviation from the original trajectory. In addition to algorithm description, some numerical simulations with challenging scenarios are presented in the paper, showing algorithm ability to solve a conflict situation in a self-organizing system including several aircraft equipped with the same proposed algorithm.