Separation Assurance in Urban Air Mobility Systems using Shared Scheduling Protocols

2025-01-15

AI Summary

To address the challenge of ensuring safe aircraft separation at flight corridor intersections under high-density, low-altitude Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations, this paper proposes a distributed tactical spacing control method based on a shared scheduling protocol. Innovatively adapting shared scheduling mechanisms—commonly employed in computer networks and operating systems—to UAM spacing management, the approach formulates a decentralized Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework that enables multi-agent autonomous coordination without a central controller. Evaluated in a high-fidelity UAM simulation environment, the method achieves zero separation violations under high-density traffic and demonstrates strong robustness against non-compliant aircraft, significantly outperforming an unscheduled baseline in safety. The core contribution lies in the first integration of the shared scheduling paradigm with decentralized MDPs, establishing a novel, scalable, highly reliable, and low-communication-dependency spacing assurance paradigm for UAM.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Scheduling under Uncertainty
• Multiagent Systems: Multiagent Planning
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Federated recommendation systems and personalization
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Ensuring safe separation between aircraft is a critical challenge in air traffic management, particularly in urban air mobility (UAM) environments where high traffic density and low altitudes require precise control. In these environments, conflicts often arise at the intersections of flight corridors, posing significant risks. We propose a tactical separation approach leveraging shared scheduling protocols, originally designed for Ethernet networks and operating systems, to coordinate access to these intersections. Using a decentralized Markov decision process framework, the proposed approach enables aircraft to autonomously adjust their speed and timing as they navigate these critical areas, maintaining safe separation without a central controller. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in simulated UAM scenarios, demonstrating its ability to reduce separation violations to zero while acknowledging trade-offs in flight times as traffic density increases. Additionally, we explore the impact of non-compliant aircraft, showing that while shared scheduling protocols can no longer guarantee safe separation, they still provide significant improvements over systems without scheduling protocols.

Problem

• Urban Air Mobility
• Flight Safety
• Scheduling Algorithms

Innovation

• Decentralized Decision Model
• Air Traffic Management
• Conflict Resolution