Trajectory Planning of Weakly Supervised Aircraft

In this paper, we propose a novel framework of air traffic management (ATM). The framework is in particular characterized by the trajectory planning of weakly supervised aircraft; the air traffic control (ATC) does not completely determine the trajectory of each aircraft unlike conventional planning methods, but determines allowable safe sets of trajectories. ATC requests pilots to select their own trajectories from the sets, and the pilots determine ones by pursuing their own aims. For example, the selection can be based on pilot preferences and airline strategies. This two stage ATM system contributes to simultaneously achieve the both objectives of the ATC and pilots such as fuel cost minimization under safety management. The effectiveness of the proposed ATM system is demonstrated in a simulation using actual air traffic data.