Real-Time Traffic Flow Formation of Multiple Aircraft Using Distributed Model Predictive Control

Due to the recent increase in air transportation demands, safe and smooth traffic flow formation in a congested airspace is regarded as one of the key issues in need of attention. With this in mind, we propose a distributed and real-time trajectory optimization method for traffic flow formation. The proposed method adopts an MIQP (Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming)-based MPC (Model Predictive Control) to calculate the trajectory of each aircraft merging into the traffic flow. To construct the model, non-convex conditions in the state equations, constraints, and conditions on merging traffic flow are represented as linear or convex quadratic constraints that include some binary variables. We confirm the reasonableness of the computed trajectories and the near real-time applicability of the method by numerical simulations.