Abstract
The increasing demand for services performed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) requires the simulation of Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) systems. In particular, Pre-Flight Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR) methods need to scale to future demand levels and generate conflict-free paths for a potentially large number of UAVs before actual takeoff. However, few studies have examined realistic scenarios and the requirements for the UTM system. In this paper, we focus on the Sendai 2030 model case, a realistic projection of UAV usage for deliveries in one area in Japan. This model case considers up to 21,000 requests for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations over a 13 hour service time, and thus poses a challenge for the Pre-Flight CDR methods. Therefore, we propose an airspace reservation method based on 4DT (3D plus time Trajectories) and map the Pre-Flight CDR problem to a Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problem. We study first-come first-served (FCFS) and “batch” processing of UAS operation requests, and compare the throughput of those methods. We analyze the air traffic topology of deliveries by UAVs, and discuss several metrics to better understand the complexity of air traffic in the Sendai model case.
Highlights
With the emerging use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for operations such as goods delivery, surveillance, search and rescue, and agricultural monitoring, the low-altitude air traffic is expected to grow significantly in the coming years [1], [2]
UAV TRAFFIC TOPOLOGY ANALYSIS To understand the difficulty of Pre-Flight Conflict Detection and Resolution (CDR) encoded as a Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problem, we need to characterize the properties of our space. [23] note that evaluating the complexity of some MAPF instance is not straightforward
The Pre-Flight CDR phase is entirely performed before UAVs take off by considering their submitted flight plans
Summary
With the emerging use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for operations such as goods delivery, surveillance, search and rescue, and agricultural monitoring, the low-altitude air traffic is expected to grow significantly in the coming years [1], [2]. THE NEED FOR ADVANCED PRE-FLIGHT CONFLICT DETECTION AND RESOLUTION METHODS UAS Operators will use UAS Service Providers (UASSPs) to integrate UAS operations into low-altitude airspace, which is shared among several independent UASSPs. Unlike the human-centered ATM system, the UTM system is an automated system that must ensure conflict-free paths for a large number of UAVs, with the steps depicted, UAVs will be tasked to perform deliveries anytime during a day. To demonstrate the need for advanced Pre-Flight CDR methods, we first introduce the Sendai 2030 model case as a realistic scenario of future deliveries by UAVs and the representations considered in our study. The study provided different existing UAVs specs in the Sendai 2030 Model Case such as wind stability, range, payload, and autonomy The reliability of these parameters has been tested in real world experiments with experimental flight tests. With these real-world data, we determined the different accumulated radii values r for each considered UAV, and we hereby consider values ranging from 15 m to 30 m
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