Controller technique for robust conflict free sequential flight mode control

Fre Flight concept is a new air traffic management paradigm that has been proposed by the avionics community to solve the problem of air traffic congestion. But the greatest challenge in realizing such a concept is conflict detection and resolution during the free flight of aircraft. In present scenario, during any conflicts or disturbances, the autopilot fails and the pilot has to take over the flight control. Therefore the requirement of a robust control system which performs well even in the presence of disturbances and uncertainties, for conflict avoidance maneuvers during free flight is of great interest. In this paper, for conflict resolution, the entire flight path is split into different discrete modes and an integrated sliding mode plus state feedback controller approach is applied to develop a robust control law for velocity, heading angle and position tracking in each mode. The ability of the controller to provide a conflict-free trajectory through different flight modes is also being validated.