A Framework for Operational Volume Generation for Urban Air Mobility Strategic Deconfliction

Abstract: Strategic pre-flight functions focus on the planning and deconfliction of routes for aircraft systems. The urban air mobility concept calls for higher levels of autonomy with onboard and en route functions but also strategic and pre-flight systems. Existing endeavours into strategic pre-flight functions focus on improving the route generation and strategic deconfliction of these routes. Introduced with the urban air mobility concept is the premise of operational volumes. These 4D regions of airspace, describe the intended operational region for an aircraft for finite time. Chaining these together forms a contract of finite operational volumes over a given route. It is no longer enough to only deconflict routes within the airspace, but to now consider these 4D operational volumes. To provide an effective all-in-one approach, we propose a novel framework for generating routes and accompanying contracts of operational volumes, along with deconfliction focused around 4D operational volumes. Experimental results show efficiency of operational volume generation utilising reachability analysis and demonstrate sufficient success in deconfliction of operational volumes.