Sky Highway Design for Dense Traffic

TL;DR

This paper proposes a sky highway concept for dense UAV traffic management, integrating route design, traffic network, and swarm control to enhance safety and capacity in urban air mobility.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive sky highway framework that combines traffic network, route planning, and swarm control for dense UAV operations in urban airspace.

Findings

The geometrical structure of the sky highway supports dense UAV traffic.

Flight modes are designed to facilitate safe and efficient UAV flow.

Demonstrations show the effectiveness of the proposed sky highway system.

Abstract

The number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) continues to explode. Within the total spectrum of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is also on the way. Dense air traffic is getting ever closer to us. Current research either focuses on traffic network design and route design for safety purpose or swarm control in open airspace to contain large volume of UAVs. In order to achieve a tradeoff between safety and volumes of UAVs, a sky highway with its basic operation for Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) UAV is proposed, where traffic network, route and swarm control design are all considered. In the sky highway, each UAV will have its route, and an airway like a highway road can allow many UAVs to perform free flight. The geometrical structure of the proposed sky highway with corresponding flight modes to support dense traffic is studied one by one. The effectiveness of the proposed sky highway is shown by the given demonstration.