London, UK, May 29-31, 2012
Efficient Conflict Resolution Method in Air Traffic
Management Based on the Speed Assignment
Jose Antonio Cobano*, David Alejo*, Anibal Ollero*,§ and Antidio Viguria§
* §
Robotics, Vision and Control Group
University of Seville
Camino de los Descubrimientos, s/n
Seville, 41092 Spain
[jacobano,dalejo,aollero]@cartuja.us.es
ABSTRACT
An efficient conflict detection and resolution method for
Air Traffic Management (ATM) under heavy traffic
conditions is presented. The problem of assigning a speed
profile to each aircraft in real time such that the separation
between aircraft is greater than a given safety distance is
considered and the total deviation from the initial planned
trajectory is minimized. The proposed method involves the
use of appropriate airspace discretization. The method
consists of two steps: a search tree step, which finds if it
exists a solution; and an optimization step by solving a QP-
problem, which minimizes a cost function. The paper also
presents simulations for several scenarios and experiments
that have been carried out in the multivehicle aerial testbed
of the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies
(CATEC).
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J.2 [Physical Sciences and Engineering]: Aerospace.
General Terms
Performance, Reliability, Experimentation.
Keywords
ATM, Conflict Detection and Resolution, aerial vehicles,
optimization
INTRODUCTION
Automation technologies will play an important role in
future Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems that should
satisfy high air traffic demand. These automation
technologies will be supported by methods and algorithms
to implement trajectory-based operations by increasing
airspace capacity, efficiency and environmental concern
while maintaining safety [1][2][3]. In this systems, aircraft
should maintain as much as possible the planned
trajectories but also maintaining minimum separation
between them. For that, efficient conflict detection and
resolution methods should be implemented.
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ATACCS’2012, 29-31 May 2012, London, UK.
Copyright 2012 IRIT PRESS, ISBN: 978-2-917490-20-4
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ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies
Aeropolis, Aerospace Technological Park of Andalusia
La Rinconada-Seville, 41309, Spain
[aviguria,aollero]@catec.aero
Aircraft conflict detection and resolution (CDR) have been
studied extensively and many methods for the assistance of
ground operators [3] have been published. An overview of
proposed models on CDR in ATM can be found in [4],
where the CDR methods are characterized depending on
the following factors: dimensions of the state information,
technique for dynamic state propagation, conflict detection
threshold, conflict resolution technique, maneuvering
dimensions, and management of multiple aircraft conflicts.
Some of these methods are devoted only to pair wise
conflicts and involve computational studies to forecast
future traffic levels [5]. The geometric approach presented
in [6] is also for pair wise non-cooperative aircraft collision
avoidance. There are also methods for optimal coordinated
maneuvers but these require significant computational
effort [7]. Reference [8] concerns a CDR method based on
a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) to optimize the
total flight time by modifying velocity or heading.
However, this method only allows one speed change for
each aircraft. There are also several methods in which
conflicts are solved by changing only the speed [9]. In [10]
the uncertainties encountered when solving pair wise
conflicts are considered. The method described in [11] is
based on MILP to solve pair wise conflicts by changing
speeds for multiple aircraft. Other method solves the
conflicts with only velocity changes by minimizing the
total flight time using mixed-integer nonlinear
programming [12]. This approach requires a high
computing time.
Methods based on genetic algorithms to solve conflicts by
considering the problem of optimal path planning between
given waypoints are presented in [13][14][15]. The main
drawback of genetic algorithms is that the computing time
is not predictable and the convergence to a solution is not
ensured in a finite time interval. The uncertainties are
considered in [15] but the computing time is high.
The optimal control method in [16] uses a kinematic model
of the aircrafts flying in a horizontal plane with constant
velocity and solves conflicts for two and three aircraft by
changing the heading. Another approach [17] involves the
application of a hybrid system model that generates safe
maneuvers. The stochastic method described in [18] is
based on the Monte Carlo approach and the computing time
is again high.
London, UK, May 29-31, 2012
In this paper, an air traffic conflict resolution problem
under heavy traffic conditions is studied. It is assumed that
the initial trajectories of each aircraft are known and the
detection method is based on a grid model [15]. Therefore,
each trajectory is defined by the cells through which the
aircraft passes. The proposed method is based on speed
planning to solve conflicts. The speed profiles for all the
aircraft involved in a conflict are computed and the
problem is solved by maintaining the planned 4D
trajectory. This approach has the advantage that the
probability of creating new conflicts with other aircrafts in
the airspace is low.
The conflicts between two or more aircraft are solved in
real time, at low computational cost, once they are detected.
A related paper is [19] in which a collision avoidance
method for multiple aerial vehicles (AVs) sharing airspace.
The proposed method is based on the technique presented
in [19], in which suboptimal solutions are found. The
proposed method ensures separation between aircraft,
which is not the case for the method described in [19].
This paper is organized into seven sections. The
formulation of the problem is described in Section II. The
description of the proposed CDR method is presented in
Section III. Finally, the simulations and experiments
carried out are covered in Section IV and the conclusions
are detailed in Section V.
PROBLEM FORMULATION
The problem considered in this paper concerns collision
detection and resolution among multiple aircraft under
heavy traffic conditions. In order to maintain the safety
distance and previously computed planned trajectories, the
heading changes are not allowed and the solution only
considers speed changes. Each aircraft computes its
collision-free trajectory by changing cooperatively its speed
profile. This speed profile presents an improvement with
respect to [9] where only an aircraft performs the maneuver
to avoid the conflict.
The detection algorithm is based on the discretization of the
airspace divided into cubic cells, also called the grid model
(see Figure 1). The discretization of the airspace offers an
advantage: the detection algorithm is simpler and faster
because a trajectory is parameterized by the number of cells
that the aircraft passes through with entrance and departure
time. The safety distance or minimum separation is given
by a number of cells and the size of cell is set between five
or ten times lower than the safety distance in order to
minimize the discretization effects while not increasing the
problem complexity. The time for which each aircraft stays
in a cell depends on its model. It is assumed that each
aircraft knows the list of cells that other aircraft or AV will
fly across. For example, in Figure 1 the list of cells of AV1
is: A5,B5, C5, D5, E5, F5, G5, H5, I5.
In [19] a collision of two aircraft is predicted when they lie
in the same cell of the discretized airspace at the same time.
However, two aircraft that are not in the same cell can be
closer than other two ones that are actually in the same cell
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ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
(see Figure 2). Therefore the algorithm based on the simple
discretization of airspace in cells does not ensure minimum
separation between aircraft. A natural idea to cope with this
disadvantage is simply to change the conflict definition
[20]. Therefore, the following definitions are considered in
this paper:
 Neighboring cells to C(i): is the set of cells whose
separation from C(i) is less than the minimum separation.
 Conflict: C(i) is crossed by an aircraft is in conflict if
there is another aircraft that crosses a cell in the
neighborhood of C(i).
 Conflict Zone: Let C1(n) and C2(n) be the sequence of
cells visited by AV1 and AV2 (see Figure 1). Let us
assume that C1(C5) and C2(E3) are the first conflictive
cells between them. Eventually C1(G5) and C2(E7) are
also in conflict while C1(H5) and C2(E8) are not. Then,
the conflict zone is composed of the cells
C1(C5;D5;E5;F5;G5;H5) and C2(E3;E4;E5;E6;E7) (see
Figure 1). This definition could be easily extended to
conflict zones crossed by more than two aircraft.
 Collision: two aircraft cross a conflict zone at the same
time.
Figure 1: Scenario with two aerial vehicles and conflict
zone (gray cells). The safety distance is given by two cells.
We distinguish three types of aircraft in order to solve
situations where a solution that avoids a collision generates
a new collision with other aircraft. These types are: aircraft
that is directly involved in the detected collision, aircraft
whose trajectories collide with the possible solution
trajectories of the directly involved aircraft and whose
velocities can be changed, and non-cooperative aircraft that
would maintain their initial velocities.
DESCRIPTION OF CDR METHOD
In this section the proposed CDR method for multiple
aircraft is presented. Firstly, the CDR method checks
whether there is a collision among aircraft or not. If
collision is detected, it is solved by assigning a speed
London, UK, May 29-31, 2012
profile to each aircraft. Therefore, stay times of each
aircraft in each cell could be changed. The resolution
method, so-called Velocity Planning, consists of two steps:
1. Search tree step: , which finds a solution if it
exists by exploring all possible arrival orders to
each CZ
2. QP-problem, optimization step which minimizes a
cost function
ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
in Figure 1, there are two arrival orders. The first one to be
tested is AV2-AV1 because AV2 arrives before.
First, the tree is built for AV1, then for AV2 and so on
when there are more AVs. Whenever a conflict zone is
reached, the tree only calculates its following weight if all
AVs that precede the AV which is building its tree, given
by arrival order, have already calculated the weights of the
edges related to that conflict zone (steps 8 and 9 in Figure
3). Figure 4 represents the complete trees in the proposed
example. Note that the horizontal length of each edge is
proportional to its weight. In this case, when AV1 comes in
conflict zone (t1) it does not continuous building its tree
because the AV before it, AV2, has not calculated its
weights of the edge related to that conflict zone, so the
AV1 tree is stopped and the AV2 tree is started and
completed. Otherwise the algorithm will continue with the
tree of the AV1.

Figure 2: Disadvantage of the method presented in [19]:

AV3 and AV4 are in conflict while AV1 and AV2 are not.
Search tree step
The goal of the search tree algorithm is to obtain arrival
orders of the aircraft to each conflict zone that provide
solution to avoid the detected collisions. We assume that all
the aircraft travel at their maximum speed and to avoid a
collision it is only possible to decrease the velocities.
Let us consider the scenario described in Figure 1 with two
aircraft and only one conflict zone. The algorithm of
building of a tree is described in Figure 3. Each node of a
tree represents a visited cell for the aircraft. Ni and Ni+1 are
two nodes that are related to neighbor cells, C(i) and
Figure 3: Search tree algorithm.
C(i+1). Consider a weight, w, for the corresponding edge
between the nodes calculated according to the following Whenever a weight related to the conflict zone is
formula: calculated, the algorithm checks if the arrival time to that
conflict leads or not to a potential collision with regard to
w( N i , N i 1 )  tin (C (i  1))  tin (C (i)) (1)
the AVs preceding. In this case, when the weight associated
where Ni is the root node and Ni+1 is the child node. tin(C(j)) to the conflict zone of AV1 tree is calculated in the upper
represents the entrance time to a cell C(j) considering branch, a potential collision is detected with AV2 (t1; t2). If
maximum speed of each aircraft (see step 7 in Figure 3). a potential collision is detected, then the algorithm creates a
new branch in the tree, assigning greater weights (that is,
Let us also define the arrival order to a conflict zone as the
the time increases and speed decreases) in as fewer edges
order in which the aircraft pass through it. This order is
as necessary in order to avoid that potential collision (step
determined by the estimated arrival time to the conflict
11 in Figure 3). The lower AV1 branch represented in
zone of each aircraft (see step 2 in Figure 3) and influences
Figure 4 is generated and the potential collision is avoided
the building of each tree in order to decide if the building
because AV1 comes in conflict zone in t2, that is, when
stops or continuous by comparing the arrival time to the
AV2 is leaving conflict zone. If the collision cannot be
conflict zone with the arrival time of the aircraft preceding.
avoided considering the speed constrains of the AV, the
Therefore, for n aircraft, a conflict zone has n! different
algorithm fails with the proposed arrival order and another
arrival orders. All the possible arrival orders are explored
arrival order has to be checked (steps 12 and 13 Figure 3).
until a solution is found. Considering the scenario showed

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objective function can be done by solving a QP-problem.
The QP-problem minimizes a quadratic cost function with
linear constraints. The cost function is given by the
separation from the trajectory planned to fulfill the mission.
2
n mi
 t  t ref 
J QP     ik ref ik  (3)
i 1 k 1  tik 
where tik is the stay time in the kth zone visited by the ith AV
and tikref is the stay time in the initial trajectory. N
represents the number of AVs and mi the number of zones
crossed by the AV ith trajectory.
The stay time in each zone can be very different, so the
denominator has been included in order to minimize large
variations in the stay time in small zones. This would lead
to saturations in the velocity control signal. The constraints
Figure 4: Trees generated from the scenario showed in
of the model are:
Figure 1. AV2 tree only has one branch because is the first
AV that passes through of the conflict zone, CZ1. AV1 has tik  aik vik  bik  0
two branches because a collision has been detected in CZ1 cik vik  d ik  tik  0 (4)
so a backtracking process starts.
i  1...n, k  1...m
The complexity of the algorithm grows as the number of
conflict zones increases. Let us assume that there are m The maximum and minimum stay time in each cell depends
conflict zones with n AVs where ni of them are involved in on the initial speed in those cells, vik. This dependence is in
the ith conflict. So, a total of n1!...nm! different orders should fact nonlinear, but it can be linearized in order to formulate
be checked. the QP-problem. This is achieved by interpolation with aik,
bik, cik and dik as the interpolation coefficients. Moreover,
The first arrival order is determined by the estimated arrival the following constraints regarding vik are considered:
time to a conflict zone of each AV. Then, each tree is built
considering the arrival order to detect potential collision. If vik  vmax  0
no solution is found with the first arrival order, a new order vmin  vik  0
should be checked. The algorithm permutes the arrival (5)
ai ,max d i ,k 1 a d
order to the conflict zone from the cost function J. The vi ,k 1   vi ,k  vi ,k 1  i ,max i ,k 1
vref vref
conflict zone with highest cost is chosen to define the
arrival order. This cost is defined as: i  1...n, k  1...m
J i  i   i (2) The first two constraints are given by the aircraft model and
the third one relates the initial speed in one cell with the
where μi and σi are the mean and standard deviation of the other in the previous cell because of the maximum
set of estimated arrival times of each AV to the conflict acceleration constraint. In the third equation, ai,max
zone. The mean of the arrival times to a conflict zone is represents the maximum desired acceleration of the ith
considered because a change in earlier conflict zones can aircraft and di,k represents the distance traveled by the ith
affect the following conflict zones. The standard deviation aircraft in the kth zone. Another constraint considered is the
is included in order to take into account the differences fulfillment of the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) at the
between the arrival times of the different AVs to a conflict end waypoint of each ith aircraft within a margin:
zone. In order to find a solution, it is advisable to change
mi
the arrival order to a conflict where all the estimated arrival
time of the vehicles involved in it are similar. t
j 1
ij  t flight  t m (6)

The backtracking process takes place when a collision is where tflight represents the initial estimated flight time, tm is
detected and a new tree should be built for one o more the maximum margin allowed, tij is the time spent in the jth
AVs. In this case, the backtracking process can become zone by the ith aircraft and mi is the number of zones
more complex than the previous case considering one crossed by the ith aircraft.
conflict zone. Note that the backtracking process is only
done for the AVs which arrive to the corresponding conflict Finally, for each conflict zone and each ith aircrfat that has
zone later. to cross that zone immediately before jth aircraft, the
following constraints should be considered in order to
QP-problem
avoid collisions:
When the search tree algorithm finds a solution, we have a
Q P 1
valid arrival order for all the conflict zones in the conflict
resolution problem. At this point, an improvement on the t
k 1
ik   t jk  0
k 1
(7)

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London, UK, May 29-31, 2012 ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
th
where P indicates the entry cell in the CZ of the j aircrfat
and Q indicates the cell that has left ith aircraft.
The above optimization problem can be solved by means of
the QP-solver implemented in the Computational Geometry
Algorithms Library (CGAL) ‎[21].
SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS
Simulations and experiments have been carried out to
validate the CDR method. The algorithms have been run in
a PC with a 2GHz Dual Core processor and 2 GB of RAM.
The operating system was Kubuntu Linux with kernel
2.6.32. The code has been written in the C++ language and
compiled with gcc-4.4.2.
A model of the aircraft is needed to simulate and evaluate
the suitability of the generated trajectories. Models of
different complexity can be used in the proposed method
‎[22‎][23]. The trade-off with the required computing time Figure 6: Second simulation scenario (S2).
should be considered. On the other hand, aircraft simulators TABLE I
can be used to generate the aircraft trajectories from real COMPUTATIONAL TIME SPENT AND CRITERIA RESULTS OF THE SOLUTIONS
flight data ‎[‎24]. The simple model presented in [20] is used OBTAINED IN S1 FROM THE PROPOSED CDR METHOD
in the simulations. Two different scenarios are considered AVs QP(S) T(S) J(S2)
Conflict Detection(s) ST(s)
to perform the following two studies:
1. Analyze how the computing time depends on the 2 0.044 0 0.020 0.064 0.857
scenario considered (see Figure 5 and Figure 6). 3 0.188 0 0.096 0.284 0.859
4 0.716 0.004 0.708 1.428 0.861
2. Check how the computing time depends on the
safety distance or minimum separation. 5 1.804 0.008 2.608 4.420 0.894
6 4.032 0.024 11.425 15.481 0.896
7 7.456 0.028 29.854 37.332 0.967
8 14.065 0.052 83.717 97.834 0.969
9 23.073 0.064 179.455 202.593 1.105
10 38.078 0.104 287.046 325.228 1.109

Table I and Table II show the computing times (T(s) is the

total computing time) and the criteria results obtained with
the proposed CDR method in S1 and S2, respectively.
When the solution should be computed in few seconds, this
method could be efficiently applied in real-time in
scenarios composed of several aircraft. The computing time
required to detect conflicts also increases with the number
of aircraft because more conflict zones are detected. On the
other hand, the computing time for a QP-problem increases
because new conflict zones appear, thus adding constraints
to the system. The number of variables considered in the
QP-problem also increases when new aircraft are added.
Two variables are needed for each zone that is crossed by
an aircraft. The dependency of computing time with the
Figure 5: First simulation scenario (S1). number of aircraft is very significant.
In Scenario 1 (S1) the size of the cell is 150m and the TABLE II
minimum separation is 4 cells . In Scenario 2 (S2) the cell COMPUTATIONAL TIME SPENT AND CRITERIA RESULTS OF THE SOLUTIONS
OBTAINED IN S2 FROM THE PROPOSED CDR METHOD
size is 100m and the separation is 6 cells. S2 represents an
airspace with convergent traffic, for example near a AVs Conflict Detection(s) ST(s) QP(S) T(S) J(S2)
terminal. The simulations in this scenario were carried out
4 0.780 0.004 4.876 5.660 43.714
with 4, 5 and 6 AVs.
5 1.908 0.020 10.353 12.281 65.139
6 3.400 0.036 13.901 17.337 72.048

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London, UK, May 29-31, 2012
The computing time is lower in S2 because the trajectories
of each AV are shorter than in S1, so less time is spent in
simulation.
The computational cost of the proposed method when the
minimum separation (i.e., the number of cells) changes is
shown in Figure 7. Note that the computing time increases
as the minimum separation is increased. This extra time is
spent in the conflict detection phase of the algorithm and
arises due to the growth of conflict zones, which in turn
means that the conflict database contains more items and it
is more expensive to generate it.
Figure 7: Computing time on varying the number of cells
in S1 with 5 AVs.
Experiments
The experiments have been carried out in the indoor multi-
vehicle testbed of the Center for Advanced Aerospace
Technologies (CATEC) with four Hummingbird quadrotors
(see Figure 8) with 200gr payload and up to 20 minutes
flight autonomy ‎[14].
Figure 8: Hummingbird quadrotor from Ascending
technologies.
First experiment shows three quad-rotors flying on a
circular scenario sharing airspace (see Figure 9Figure 1).
The parameters are: vik=0.4m/s, vmin=0.05m/s, vmax=1m/s,
tflight=20s and the constraint of the ETA is not considered.
The CDR method should guarantee a minimum separation
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ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
of 1.5m. A conflict is detected in the center of the circle,
and then the speed profile is computed for each quad-rotor
to avoid the conflict in a cooperative way by minimizing
the cost (3).
Figure 9: Scenarios considered in experiments: Experiment
I (grey lines) and Experiment II (black lines).
Table III shows the speed profile (SP) computed for each
quad-rotor and the time of speed change (T). When a quad-
rotor comes into the conflict zone it increases its speed in
order to exit more rapidly. The order of entry in the conflict
zone is: AV1, AV2, AV3. On the other hand, Figure 10
shows the separation between each pair of AVs.
Figure 10: Separation between AVs in Experiment I.
The second experiment presents a different scenario (see
Figure 9). The considered parameters are: vik=1.0m/s,
vmin=0.05m/s, vmax=2.0m/s, tflight=8s and tm=1.0s. The
minimum separation is 0.8m. Table IV shows the speed
profiles. Also, the separation between each pair of AVs is
depicted in Figure 11. Table IV shows the order of arrival
to each conflict zone. AV3 comes into the first conflict
zone (t=2.056s), between AV1 and AV3. After, it exits
(t=3.609s) and then AV1 comes into the same conflict zone
(t=3.689s). In the second conflict zone, between AV2 and
AV3, AV2 comes in the instant t=2.513s and exits in the
instant t=4.233s. Then AV3 comes into this second conflict
zone (t=4.336s). Moreover, each AV maintains its initial
London, UK, May 29-31, 2012 ATACCS’2012 | RESEARCH PAPERS
trajectory and fulfills its ETA at the end waypoint (6).
TABLE IV
These values are shown in bold in Table IV. SPEED PROFILE AND TIME FOR EACH AV IN EXPERIMENT II.
TABLE III AVs SP(m/s) T(s)
SPEED PROFILE AND TIME FOR EACH AV IN EXPERIMENT I.
1 0.736 3.689
AVs SP(m/s) T(s)
1 1.210 5.598
1 0.998 2.537 1 0.954 8.781
1 0.965 6.245 2 1.217 2.513
1 0.415 10.536 2 1.128 4.233
2 0.378 6.261 2 0.967 7.417
2 1.000 9.932 3 1.182 2.056
2 0.416 14.524 3 1.038 3.609
3 0.236 9.633 3 1.194 4.336
3 0.530 16.146 3 0.924 6.126
3 0.495 20.739 3 1.041 7.634

CONCLUSIONES Future work will be focused on adding other maneuvers to

In this paper, an efficient conflict detection and resolution
method for ATM is presented. The problem of assigning a
speed profile to each aircraft in real time under heavy
traffic conditions is addressed. Thus, the proposed method
solves the conflicts by changing the speed profiles of each
aircraft and is based on that is presented in ‎[19]. Some
changes are introduced in order to ensure a safety distance
or minimum separation between aircraft.
Figure 11: Separation between AVs in Experiment II.
The paper has led to advances in conflict resolution
methods by assigning a speed profile: concept of 4D
trajectory is considered, that is, the arrival time of each
aircraft at the end waypoint of the trajectory is taken into
account to solve the conflicts; low computing time;
different scenarios are considered and the detection of
conflicts takes into account several aircraft rather than just
a pair of aircraft as in ‎[11]. Furthermore, each aircraft can
return to its necessary speed after solving the conflict in
order to fulfill the time of arrival, so more than one speed
change is allowed. Moreover, the method computes a near-
optimal solution, with small deviations from the initial
trajectories.
The implemented method has been validated by simulation
and by experimentation with several aircraft in the CATEC
multi-vehicle testbed.
solve conflicts such as the change of heading ‎[15]. Also,
uncertainty should be considered to explore more realistic
scenarios ‎[15].
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the European Commission
FP7 ICT Programme under the project EC-SAFEMOBIL
288082 and the CLEAR project (DPI2011-28937-C02-01)
funded by the Spanish Research and Development
Program. Also the partial funding from the Junta de
Andalucia project P09-TEP- 5120 is acknowledged.
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