Conflict Detection, Resolution, and Control of Aircraft using 4D Polynomial Splines

We implement a conflict detection and 4D flight path resolution algorithm on quadrotor platforms. 4D flight paths are based on 5^th-order polynomial interpolating splines that fully define the flight path’s position, velocity, and acceleration at each moment in time between waypoints. Our detection and resolution algorithms operate in a distributed manner with multiple quadrotors using 8Gb Raspberry Pis. We control the quadrotors to the 4D flight paths with Pixhawk autopilots using PX4 software. The results of this work show the capability of our flight path model to effectively separate autonomous vehicles with flight paths that their control systems are capable of tracking.