Traffic-Separation and Collision-Avoidance Strategy to Promote Civil Applications of UAVs

Traffic separation and collision avoidance are safety critical requirements to operate aircraft in prescribed environments. UAVs also need to meet these requirements to be integrated in such environments. In this paper a strategy is proposed to develop a system that can provide an airborne capability to autonomously avoid a conflict. This strategy is based on a concept that complies with the ICAO vision of a modern ATM system. Such strategy is also implemented through an algorithm that makes use of a four-dimensional approach in the time-space domain to detect and resolve a conflict using kinematic constraints. Each intruder or obstacle is modeled through a moving ellipsoid which represents a region where another aircraft must avoid to go. The proposed approach is suitable to detect and resolve potential conflicts real-time.