International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 1, Issue 1, October-2010 1

SWARM INTELLIGENCE FOR CONFLICT DE-

TECTION AND RESOLUTION IN FREE
FLIGHT ENVIRONMENTS
MANIKANDAN VIJAYAKUMAR

Abstract— In this paper we propose the Swarm intelligence (SI) and Free flight environment. Swarm Intelligence, which is a
type of artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. SI systems are typically
made up of a population of simple agents or boids interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The agents
follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave,
local, and to a certain degree random. On the other way Free flight is a developing air traffic control method that uses no
centralized control (e.g. air traffic controllers). Instead, parts of airspace are reserved dynamically and automatically in a
distributed way using computer communication to ensure the required separation between aircraft. There are some cases
where the conflicts occur in free flight environment leading to chaos. This is been detected and resolved using the Swarm
Intelligence which also helps in optimizing the path, finding the shortest path and also in air traffic control .

Index Terms— Free flight environment, Swarm intelligence (SI), Air Traffic Controllers (ATC), Detecting, Optimizing, Resolving
and Artificial Intelligence (A.I).

1 INTRODUCTION

N ow-a-days air traffic system is reaching its opera-

tional limits, and accommodating future air traffic
growth will be a challenging task for the aviation
industry. Radical design changes in the present-day air
traffic control system are required to meet this challenge.
Free ight is one such initiative that is actively being pur-
sued by government and industry alike, where pilots will
have an active role in airborne separation and real-time
route planning. However, there are several safety chal-
lenges and design issues to be addressed before free ight
can become a reality.
Free Flight is an Air Traffic Management (ATM) concept
whereby airspace users are allowed more freedom in se-
lecting routes. This could mean they are no longer re-
stricted to airways but are allowed to fly direct routes
from origin to destination at their optimal altitudes, using
favorable winds and avoiding hazards themselves. By no
longer following airways it could, however, become
harder for Air Traffic Control (ATC) to monitor and con-
trol the traffic. To prevent this and to provide true self-
optimization, airborne separation has been proposed as a
part of Free Flight. There have been many potential ATM
concepts in the past which have aimed at direct routing,
but airborne separation, even under IFR conditions, is a
unique feature of the Free Flight concept. It is a revolutio-
nary concept that will enable greater traffic volume and
operational flexibility by distributing some of the functio-
nality, including conflict detection and resolution, to air-
borne systems and pilots. Advanced air traffic manage-
ment (ATM) concepts that are envisioned in free ight
must be investigated and evaluated before they can be
operationally tested, without which it can be a risky and
expensive exercise. A wide range of ATM systems, such
as the Total Airspace and Airport Modeler, the Opera-
tional and Supportability Implementation System, the
Airport and Airspace Simulation Model, etc., have been
developed by industry and government organizations;
however, they are designed around the speci c require-
ments of air traffic service providers. Furthermore, Na-
tional Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
research found them to be inadequate for modeling fu-
ture ATM concepts and to be lacking in several capabili-
ties.
Based on the projected requirements for free ight we
established an algorithm to detect and resolve the con-
flicts occurring in the free flight environments. Swarm
Intelligence is an AI technique that focuses on studying
the collective behavior of a decentralized system made up
by a population of simple agents interacting locally with
each other and with the environment. Although there is
typically no centralized control dictating the behavior of
the agents, local interactions among the agents often
cause a global pattern to emerge. Examples of systems
like this can be found abundant in nature, including ant
colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, bac-
teria, and many more. This kind of “swarm-like” algo-
rithm, such as Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Par-
ticle Swarm Optimization (PSO), has already been ap-
plied successfully to solve real-world optimization prob-
lems in engineering and telecommunication. SI models
have many features in common with Evolutionary Algo-
rithms. Like EA, SI models are population-based. The
system is initialized with a population of individuals (i.e.,
potential solutions). These individuals are then manipu-
lated over many generations by ways of mimicking social
behavior of insects or animals, in an effort to find the op-
tima. Unlike EA, SI models do not use evolutionary oper-
ators such as crossover and mutation. A potential solution
simply "flies" through the search space by modifying it-
self according to its relationship with other individuals in

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