Hybrid control in air traffic management systems

In a new collaborative project involving the University of California, Berkeley, NASA Ames Research Center, and Honeywell Systems Research Center, the authors have begun the study of hierarchical, hybrid control systems in the framework of air traffic management systems (ATMS). The need for a new ATMS arises from the overcrowding of large urban airports and the need to more efficiently land and take off larger numbers of aircraft without building new runways. Technological advances that make a more advanced air traffic control system a reality include the availability of relatively inexpensive and fast real time computers (both on board the aircraft and in the control tower) and global positioning systems. The usefulness of these technological advances is currently limited by today's air traffic control system, which involves the use of "freeways" in the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) region around urban airports. These freeways are set approach patterns to runways which do not allow for the possibility of so-called "free flight" by an aircraft to its destination. Limiting the aircraft trajectories in this manner results in the addition of both planned and unplanned delays to air travel.