A time-to-go control law for spacing vehicles at a point Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • This paper presents an approach to spacing vehicles in time to an endpoint, where the objective is to achieve a desired time between consecutive vehicles reaching the endpoint. The control methodology is motivated by a future aircraft-spacing concept called Interval Management that is currently being developed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The control parameter is the time-to-go, which is the time to reach the endpoint from a vehicle's current position along a reference trajectory. A control law is developed to drive the time-to-go of the ith vehicle to a desired value relative to the time-to-go of its preceding vehicle. Analysis shows that the time-to-go control law yields a weakly-string-stable system assuming a constant-velocity reference trajectory. Simulation results are used to demonstrate feasibility of the control approach, as well as to show good string behavior, meaning that errors in the inter-vehicle spacing and control input magnitudes do not grow along a string of vehicles. Considerations for implementing the time-to-go control law for the Interval Management application are discussed. 2011 by The MITRE Corporation.

published proceedings

  • AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference 2011

author list (cited authors)

  • Weitz, L. A., & Hurtado, J. E.

complete list of authors

  • Weitz, LA||Hurtado, JE

publication date

  • December 2011