Arrival Aircraft Autonomous Merging and Spacing Based on Distributed Control

ABSTRACT

The autonomous merging and spacing operation for arrival aircraft in the dense terminal airspace has become one of the most important issues within the context of autonomous aircraft operation. It facilitates the improvement of traffic flexibility and efficiency, operational safety, and airspace exploitation. Focusing on the autonomous merging and spacing problem, this paper proposes a distributed control algorithm to achieve the orderly and safe flight operation. The aircraft model consisting of nonlinear aerodynamics and kinematics is initially constructed, which is further converted into a linear system through a variable substitution and a virtual input transformation method. By modeling the aircraft merging process as a formation problem, a distributed control algorithm is designed, which contains a consensus term to implement merging maneuver and an artificial potential field term to guarantee safe spacing. The convergence analysis of the distributed algorithm is established based on the Lyapunov approach. Simulation based on the Standard Terminal Arrival Route of Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport is conducted, which verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.