Probabilistic Conflict Resolution

• This paper studies the problem of aircraft midair conflict resolution, which is a key technology to enable the coordinated and decentralized air traffic control envisioned in the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). 

• The method proposed in this paper is based on stochastic optimal control, which is able to incorporate uncertainties in both aircraft and wind dynamics. The proposed numerical algorithm uses a Markov chain (MC) to approximate the continuous-time aircraft and wind dynamics, then the optimal control law is derived based on the MC. 

• The proposed algorithm is able to resolve the conflicts between aircraft and moving convective weather regions. For conflict resolution between pairs of aircraft, a decomposition technique is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of the numerical algorithm. 

• Simulations show that the proposed algorithm provides robustness against uncertainties in the system and is suitable for real applications.

Related Publication

• W. Liu and I. Hwang, “Probabilistic Aircraft Mid-Air Conflict Resolution Using Stochastic Optimal Control,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation System, Vol.15(1), pp. 37-46, February 2014