A systems engineering approach to collaborative coordination of UAS in the NAS with safety guarantees

We develop new fundamental methodologies for high performance and provably safe autonomous and collaborative control and operation of autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in the national airspace (NAS), where both UAS and manned aircraft fly. The proposed framework is model-based, and emphasizes multiple scales in time and space as well as hybrid systems mathematics to capture both the analog and logical components of control functionalities. We develop on-line control laws that allow for multiple UAS agents to reconfigure to different formations with proofs of safety and convergence while navigating in integrated airspace with piloted air vehicles. We demonstrate our results in simulated scenario with both cooperative and uncooperative air vehicles.