Cooperative Control for Ground Traffic at Airports

Abstract : With the sustained increase in air transportation, resulting in increased operational costs, potential danger with conflictive traffic conditions and delays for passengers and airlines, ground traffic has become a critical issue for many airports. In this communication the ground traffic at an airport is considered to be composed of three dependent flows: aircraft, passenger vehicles and servicing vehicles. It is assumed in this study that each type of vehicles belongs to a common pool which attends every arriving or departing aircraft. The objective here is to propose a global control structure based on cooperation between the different agents responsible for the management of each fleet to reduce overall aircraft traffic delays at airside.