Does ATM Need Centralized Coordination? Autonomous Conflict Resolution Analysis in a Constrained Speed Environment

Nicolas Durand (1, 2) , Nicolas Barnier (2)

1 MAIAA - ENAC - Laboratoire de Mathématiques Appliquées, Informatique et Automatique pour l'Aérien
2 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile

The concept of Free-Flight, introduced in the 90s, opened a debate on the efficiency of letting aircraft deal with conflicts without any centralized control. Many models have been proposed for autonomous aircraft solvers but their efficiency is not well-known. In this paper, we experiment powerful algorithm derived from robotics which is able to deal with thousands of robots in very small spaces, and show how its performance plummets when speeds are constrained. We also compare this autonomous algorithm with a centralized approach using evolutionary computation on a complex example to point out their relative performance in a speed constrained environment. This comparison provides scientific arguments for the necessity of centralized air traffic control.

Mots clés: conflict resolution; free-flight; geometrical algo- rithms; evolutionary computation

Domaines: Informatique [cs]; Modélisation et simulation

Nicolas Durand, Nicolas Barnier. Does ATM Need Centralized Coordination? Autonomous Conflict Resolution Analysis in a Constrained Speed Environment. Air traffic control quarterly : an international journal of engineering and operations, 2015, 23 (4), pp.325 - 346. ⟨10.2514/atcq.23.4.325⟩. ⟨hal-01859930⟩