SOFTWARE that allows planes to 鈥渟warm鈥� could eliminate mid-air collisions
regardless of how crowded the airspace is, say its French creators. Rather than
slavishly sticking to air corridors dictated by air traffic control, pilots
would choose their own flight path after takeoff, cutting journey times.
鈥淚n a free flight situation, this sort of swarming software is absolutely
necessary,鈥� says developer G茅raud Granger at CENA, the Center for Aerial
Navigation Studies in Toulouse. CENA鈥檚 system has already been tested on a
simulator using archived data on real air traffic, and it successfully prevented
a pile-up with 35 planes sharing airspace.
FACES (Free flight Autonomous and Coordinated Embarked Solver) only advises
pilots to make manoeuvres when absolutely necessary. This 鈥渄istributed software鈥�
means that no particular plane is ever in command, so they make their avoidance
manoeuvres together.
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When pilots are confronted with one potential collision, says Granger, the
challenge is to give them instructions for evasive manoeuvres without causing
another.
To do this, each plane calculates a new heading one at a time, its software
taking into account only the planes that have already planned their new course.
This way, the first plane simply stays on its course, while the last plane in
the sequence will have to plan its new path around all the other planes in its
35-kilometre detection zone. Once the manoeuvres have all been planned, the
planes inform their pilots of their new course and the choreographed manoeuvres
are carried out.
The advantage of CENA鈥檚 distributed鈥攐r leaderless鈥攁pproach is
that you don鈥檛 need a human controller or additional airport infrastructure to
make it work. Granger says the software can be embedded in existing flight
management systems.
