Cooperative conflict detection and resolution of civil unmanned aerial vehicles in metropolis

Dong Yin,Yifeng Niu,Jian Yang,Lei Zhu

doi:10.1177/1687814016651195

Dong Yin, Yifeng Niu + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1687814016651195

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Abstract

Unmanned air vehicles have recently attracted attention of many researchers because of their potential civil applications. A systematic integration of unmanned air vehicles in non-segregated airspace is required that allows safe operation of unmanned air vehicles along with other manned aircrafts. One of the critical issues is conflict detection and resolution. This article proposes to solve unmanned air vehicles’ conflict detection and resolution problem in metropolis airspace. First, the structure of metropolis airspace in the coming future is studied, and the airspace conflict problem between different unmanned air vehicles is analyzed by velocity obstacle theory. Second, a conflict detection and resolution framework in metropolis is proposed, and factors that have influences on conflict-free solutions are discussed. Third, the multi-unmanned air vehicle conflict resolution problem is formalized as a nonlinear optimization problem with the aim of minimizing overall conflict resolution consumption. The safe separation constraint is further discussed to improve the computation efficiency. When the speeds of conflict-involved unmanned air vehicles are equal, the nonlinear safe separation constraint is transformed into linear constraints. The problem is solved by mixed integer convex programming. When unmanned air vehicles are with unequal speeds, we propose to solve the nonlinear optimization problem by stochastic parallel gradient descent–based method. Our approaches are demonstrated in computational examples.

Highlights

Unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are promising to be applied in many civil fields, such as traffic monitoring and cargo delivery
If civil UAVs are permitted to fly in lowaltitude airspace, the advanced communication techniques would be capable to connect them with groundbased air traffic management (ATM) system
Our article studies on the issue associate with cooperative conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) of UAVs in metropolis airspace

Summary

Introduction

Unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are promising to be applied in many civil fields, such as traffic monitoring and cargo delivery. Air traffic safety is achieved through a hierarchical mechanism.[1] UAVs are different with manned planes in several aspects. An efficient CD&R system is a necessity The emerging technologies, such as 4/5G technology and Automatic Dependent SurveillanceBroadcast (ADS-B), have spurred researches on CD&R of UAVs.[5,6] If civil UAVs are permitted to fly in lowaltitude airspace, the advanced communication techniques would be capable to connect them with groundbased air traffic management (ATM) system. The ground-based short-term CD&R method would be possible Based on this idea, we propose to devise an efficient framework for CD&R problem of UAVs. The CD&R is departed into two phases: conflict detection and conflict resolution. We propose a hierarchical CD&R framework, in which we consider all the elements that may have influence on safe separation problem of UAVs, for example, UAVs’ states, tall buildings, manned aviation, and weather. The safe separation constraint is further discussed in this article

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