UAV Flight Path Deconfliction With ASIC-Based Collision Avoidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
As the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increases, the complexity of preventing flight path conflicts and collisions becomes significant, especially due to varying navigation impediments like weather and structures, requiring advanced technology for safe regulation and collision avoidance beyond the 400 feet altitude limit.
Innovation Solution
A method involving the receipt of telemetry and air traffic data, analysis by deconfliction circuitry to identify potential collisions, and rerouting of UAV flight paths to avoid conflicts, with navigation instructions transmitted to the UAV, utilizing an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) optimized for UAV navigation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If comprehensive flight path deconfliction is implemented to prevent collisions, then safety is improved, but computational complexity and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The deconfliction system is segmented into distributed components: each UAV runs a local deconfliction module that processes only relevant flight path data, while a central server handles broader coordination. This segmentation reduces the computational burden on any single system component while maintaining comprehensive safety coverage across the entire UAV fleet.
Solution Approach 2:
A central server acts as an intermediary between individual UAVs and the broader air traffic management system. The server receives telemetry data from multiple UAVs, performs centralized deconfliction analysis, and distributes navigation instructions back to the UAVs. This intermediary approach consolidates computational complexity into a dedicated component that can efficiently manage multiple flight paths without requiring each UAV to independently process all flight path data.
2Reliability
If real-time flight path analysis is performed to detect conflicts, then collision avoidance capability is improved, but data processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary deconfliction analysis by continuously monitoring flight paths and identifying potential conflicts before they occur. The deconfliction circuitry proactively analyzes predicted flight paths against each other and against air traffic data, allowing the system to detect and resolve conflicts in advance rather than reacting after conflicts have developed, thereby reducing real-time processing requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies partial deconfliction analysis focused on the most critical flight path interactions and spatial zones rather than exhaustively analyzing all possible flight path combinations. By prioritizing analysis of flight paths that are closest to each other in space and time, the system achieves adequate collision avoidance with reduced computational overhead.
Data Source
AI summary
Flight path deconfliction among unmanned aerial vehicles is disclosed. Telemetry data received from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and air traffic data received from a server or other data sources are analyzed, using deconfliction circuitry, to determine whether a flight path conflict indicative of a potential collision exists. The deconfliction circuitry reroutes the flight path of the UAV to avoid the flight path conflict, and transmits, in dependence upon the rerouted flight path, navigation instructions to the UAV for avoiding the potential collision. The deconfliction circuitry includes hardware-implemented logic optimized for processing the navigation data.