Safe Arrival Scheduling at Constraint Waypoints in UAM Corridors
This research addresses the critical problem of ensuring safe self-separation for UAM vehicles in corridors, which is crucial for the future adoption and operation of urban air mobility.
This study proposes an Air Traffic Control (ATC) concept for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) corridors, where operators share arrival schedules at Constrained Waypoints (CWPs). Two methods are introduced to calculate minimum safe arrival time gaps: one based on Near Mid-Air-Collision (NMAC) rules, effective under normal speed limits, and another on Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) rules, which guarantees safety even when speed limits are exceeded but may reduce traffic flow.
This study introduces a novel Air Traffic Control (ATC) concept to support self-separation between vehicles in Urban Air Mobility (UAM) corridors. Our proposed scheme involves sharing intended arrival schedules at Constrained Waypoints (CWPs) among UAM operators. We propose two approaches to assist the arrival scheduling at CWPs by computing the minimum arrival time gap necessary for each pair of vehicles to ensure their safety throughout the flights within the corridor. The first approach considers the minimum separation distance required by the Near Mid-Air-Collision (NMAC) avoidance rules, while the second one is based on the Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) rules. We demonstrate that the NMAC-rule-based approach can effectively prevent collisions in normal circumstances, where the vehicles adhere to the speed limits of the corridor. However, this approach does not guarantee safety if vehicles exceed the speed limits. Conversely, while the RSS-rule-based approach ensures collision prevention during emergencies when vehicles exceed speed limits, it may require larger arrival time gaps under normal circumstances, which may lead to reduced traffic flow. Our results are confirmed through numerical simulations.