Flight Conflict Detection and Resolution Based
on Digital Grid
Yang Yi
1(&) , Ming Tong
1 , and LiuXi
2
1 State Key Laboratory of Air Traffic Management System and Technology,
Nanjing 210000, China
nuaa_yang@nuaa.edu.cn
2 Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Abstract. For high-altitude control area, in order to assist the ground control
personnel to monitor short-term flight conflicts in real-time, and to solve the
complex flight conflicts that may occur in multi-aircraft from a global perspective, this paper first establishes a spatial digital grid model based on flight
safety intervals, and reasonably simplifies the motion model. Secondly, the
short-term reachable domain of the aircraft is transformed into grid coordinates,
and the numerically dimensioned method is used to obtain the conflicting
reachable domain grid coordinates. On the basis of conflict detection, dynamic
programming method is used to select the mutually exclusive grid coordinates
which are obtained by traversing grid coordinates, and finally the conflict resolution decision of each aircraft is determined by the performance index. The
simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the
complex flight conflict problem and provide the resolution decision that meets
the safety interval and performance constraints before the TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System), while the algorithm time can meet certain real-time
requirements.
Keywords: Flight conflict detection and resolution Á Grids model Á Dynamic
programming
1 Introduction
With the rapid development of civil aviation industry, air traffic flow has increased
dramatically [1]. In civil aviation alone, in 2018, 610 million passengers were transported, which has an increase of 10.9% over the previous year [2]. Meanwhile, considering that military aviation, airfreight, and other air activities have becoming more
frequent, high altitude control areas in China gets more crowded, which leads to higher
properties of flight conflict [3].
At present, there are three main ways to prevent flight conflicts: air traffic control
deployment (ATC), Airborne Collision Avoidance (TCAS) and visual obstacle
avoidance [4, 5]. ATC can command and deploy aircraft from a global perspective,
while TCAS can only achieve local conflict resolution. Considering that the present
ATC system is a typical man-in-loop decision system [6], in which the control decisions rely on both established control rules and controllers’ experience [7]. In order to
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Q. Liang et al. (Eds.): Artificial Intelligence in China, LNEE 572, pp. 467–479, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0187-6_56
on Digital Grid
Yang Yi
1(&) , Ming Tong
1 , and LiuXi
2
1 State Key Laboratory of Air Traffic Management System and Technology,
Nanjing 210000, China
nuaa_yang@nuaa.edu.cn
2 Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Abstract. For high-altitude control area, in order to assist the ground control
personnel to monitor short-term flight conflicts in real-time, and to solve the
complex flight conflicts that may occur in multi-aircraft from a global perspective, this paper first establishes a spatial digital grid model based on flight
safety intervals, and reasonably simplifies the motion model. Secondly, the
short-term reachable domain of the aircraft is transformed into grid coordinates,
and the numerically dimensioned method is used to obtain the conflicting
reachable domain grid coordinates. On the basis of conflict detection, dynamic
programming method is used to select the mutually exclusive grid coordinates
which are obtained by traversing grid coordinates, and finally the conflict resolution decision of each aircraft is determined by the performance index. The
simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively solve the
complex flight conflict problem and provide the resolution decision that meets
the safety interval and performance constraints before the TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System), while the algorithm time can meet certain real-time
requirements.
Keywords: Flight conflict detection and resolution Á Grids model Á Dynamic
programming
1 Introduction
With the rapid development of civil aviation industry, air traffic flow has increased
dramatically [1]. In civil aviation alone, in 2018, 610 million passengers were transported, which has an increase of 10.9% over the previous year [2]. Meanwhile, considering that military aviation, airfreight, and other air activities have becoming more
frequent, high altitude control areas in China gets more crowded, which leads to higher
properties of flight conflict [3].
At present, there are three main ways to prevent flight conflicts: air traffic control
deployment (ATC), Airborne Collision Avoidance (TCAS) and visual obstacle
avoidance [4, 5]. ATC can command and deploy aircraft from a global perspective,
while TCAS can only achieve local conflict resolution. Considering that the present
ATC system is a typical man-in-loop decision system [6], in which the control decisions rely on both established control rules and controllers’ experience [7]. In order to
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Q. Liang et al. (Eds.): Artificial Intelligence in China, LNEE 572, pp. 467–479, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0187-6_56