Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2005

City

Dayton

Abstract

National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Distributed Air Ground Traffic Management (DAG-TM) program has recently investigated a concept called “En-route Free Maneuvering” as a proposed solution for expanding airspace capacity limits. A critical element for this concept is conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) using the 3D cockpit situation display (CSD). The only fielded system performing some of this function is the Traffic Alert & Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), a radar-based alerting system used by most commercial aircraft for collision detection and avoidance. TCAS is inappropriate for an en-route self-separation application due to its reactive nature, and inherent lack of flexibility. Therefore, a new system was designed with improved intent information in the form of 4D flight plans, broadcast and shared amongst en-route aircraft, which in turn allowed these aircraft to detect and resolve conflicts well in advance of a projected conflict. A key element in this approach is ensuring that burdening, the assignment of final responsibility for conflict resolution is clearly assigned to the aircraft not in right-of-way. The basis for this burdening is called the rules-of-the-road (ROR), a term taken from the rules designed for guiding collision avoidance in VFR (visual flight rules). Given the potential complexity of determining burdening assignment, the automation described herein computes assignment using these rules, and then notifies the crew if it has the right-of-way or is burdened to resolve the conflict.

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