Potential functions for en-route air traffic management and flight planning

This paper proposes an object oriented methodology and use of potential functions for efficient solutions to en-route air traffic management and flight planning in a complex airspace system. In this object oriented methodology, different objects, e.g., weather, Special Use Airspace (SUA), traffic, etc., and their attributes, e.g., weather orientation, SUA geometry, traffic density, etc., are defined by using potential functions. The interaction of the object of interest (host aircraft) and environment is modeled through an artificial potential field, whose interaction model is simple and well defined. This helps in framing a simple algorithm and produces efficient and complete solutions. The path planning and conflict detection and resolution algorithms developed for this methodology provide efficient solutions in the comprehensively defined environment model in which uncertainty is very limited. The algorithms have been implemented in a low-level flight planner. Results to validate the operation of the algorithm and feasibility of the methodology are provided and a functional layout of the flight planner is provided.