Aircraft trajectory planning with collision avoidance using mixed integer linear programming

• Published in: Proceedings of the 2002 American Control Conference (IEEE Cat. No.CH37301) Vol. 3; pp. 1936 - 1941 vol.3
• Main Authors: Richards, A., How, J.P.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway NJ IEEE 2002
• Subjects: Air traffic control; Applied sciences; Collision avoidance; Computer science; control theory; systems; Control theory. Systems; Exact sciences and technology; Military aircraft; Mixed integer linear programming; Path planning; Remotely operated vehicles; Space vehicles; Trajectory; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Vehicle dynamics; Operations research; Ordered set; Control system; Collision; Spacecraft; Multipath propagation; Mixed integer programming; Path planning; Optimization; Optimal trajectory; Dynamic model; Aircraft; Collision avoidance
• ISBN: 0780372980; 9780780372986
• ISSN: 0743-1619
• DOI: 10.1109/ACC.2002.1023918

Describes a method for finding optimal trajectories for multiple aircraft avoiding collisions. Developments in spacecraft path-planning have shown that trajectory optimization including collision avoidance can be written as a linear program subject to mixed integer constraints, known as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP). This can be solved using commercial software written for the operations research community. In the paper, an approximate model of aircraft dynamics using only linear constraints is developed, enabling the MILP approach to be applied to aircraft collision avoidance. The formulation can also be extended to include multiple waypoint path-planning, in which each vehicle is required to visit a set of points in an order chosen within the optimization.