This paper addresses the opportunities and challenges involved in applying natural language processing techniques to the control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The problem of controlling an unmanned aircraft via natural language inputs is formulated as a feedback control problem. Two implementations of such systems are described. The phraseology of the existing air traffic control language...

A primary function of air traffic flow management is to strategically shape traffic demand to match capacities (e.g., airport arrival/departure rate limits and Sector capacities), without imposing excessive delay. In the current United States National Airspace System (NAS), the disruptions modulating capacities and hence traffic management are predominantly weather events, including convection,...

The central role of air traffic control encompasses: 1) minimizing the probability of loss-of-separation conflicts between aircraft, and 2) facilitating the flow of air traffic by providing such services as traffic and weather information and navigational assistance to pilots. In spite of an increasing number of near misses, there have been almost no midair collisions in the past 35 years betwe...

Today, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system relies primarily on verbal communication between the air traffic controllers and the pilots of the aircraft in the controlled airspace. Although a computer system exists that processes primary radar, secondary radar, and flight plan information, the information contained within the verbal communications is not retained. The introduction of Automatic S...

Aircraft collision avoidance maneuvers are important and complex applications. Curved flight exhibits nontrivial continuous behavior. In combination with the control choices during air traffic maneuvers, this yields hybrid systems with challenging interactions of discrete and continuous dynamics. As a case study illustrating the use of a new proof assistant for a logic for nonlinear hybrid syst...

In view of the ever-increasing air traffic, much attention in air-traffic-management research has been given to improving arrival and departure efficiency. As air traffic begins and ends at the airport, the issues of taxi delays and ground-operation incursions become more pressing. This paper considers the surface-traffic problem at major airports and envisions a collaborative traffic and aircr...

For years the air traffic routes have been fixed by the air traffic controllers on the basis of pre-acquired knowledge. Free flight air traffic management is a solution to move the decision making process for route choices from air traffic controllers to the cockpit. The basic idea is optimize the flight routes in the consideration of multiple objectives .i.e. the optimal path is decided based ...