Generation of Curvature Continuous Trajectories for Transport Aircraft using Bezier Curves

Abstract : With the increase in air traffic, better management and organization of it is crucial for increasing traffic safety and airspace capacity. Hence the need of ad-hoc descriptions of more complex and flexible aircraft trajectories, allowing high traffic densities and limiting environmental impact. The approach consists of a smooth 4D path generation from pre-existing control points by stitching several Bezier curves while assuring G 2 continuity at the joints. Also, as the Euclidian distance between control points and the proposed trajec-tory is controlled by an optimal reshaping of the trajectory, the tradeoff between curvature-speed-load factor of the trajectory is considered. The generated trajectories are meant to be a complement to regular flight plans, helping to solve air traffic conflicts and enhance air capacity by better timing. Matlab simulations corroborate the feasibility of the approach, showing promising results when a distance range is defined for the reshaping algorithm.