Artificial Intelligence controller able to manage Air traffic Control (ATC) and Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) within a single framework

Project Information

HYPERSOLVER

Grant agreement ID: 101114820

DOI

10.3030/101114820

Project closed

EC signature date 7 June 2023

Start date 1 June 2023

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 1 291 438,75

EU contribution

€ 759 200,00

Coordinated by

NEOMETSYS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HYPERSOLVER (Artificial Intelligence controller able to manage Air traffic Control (ATC) and Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) within a single framework)

Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) is the problem of adjusting the traffic demand in each traffic volume using ATFM measures so that aircraft can be safely separated during the subsequent Air Traffic Control (ATC) process. On the other hand, ATC officers (ATCOs) give different aircraft heading, speed, and flight level change instructions to separate them in flight. Both ATFM and ATC problems have been subject of research during decades, however, all previous works addressed the ATFM and ATC problems independently. The project aims to develop an HyperSolver based on advanced Artificial Intelligent Reinforcement Learning method with continuous reassessment and dynamic updates, i.e. an holistic solver from end-to-end, covering the whole process to manage, density of aircraft, complexity of trajectories, interactions (potential conflict in Dynamic Capacity Balancing timeframe) of trajectories, conflict of trajectories at medium- term and conflict of trajectories at short-term.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The main achievements are:
- Description of the HYPERSOLVER concept: Production of the Concept Outline document.
- Development of a simulator prototype.
- Collection of airspace structure data.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The impact of HYPERSOLVER solution is potentially very important as it would completely change the way ATC and ATFM is performed.

Further research can be envisaged for example to explore new regulation measures taking advantage of HYPERSOLVER. The ENGAGE project HYPERSTREAM has been submitted to combine the results of a previous ENGAGE research project leaded by NMS with HYPERSOLVER solution. The Flight Centric ATC with Airstreams (FC2A) project has contributed to delineate the approach of flow corridors for the management of traffic in highly dense airspace over Europe. The approach of FC2A is complementary to HYPERSOLVER.

The HYPERSOLVER platform is also proposed in the AMELIA project ("Advanced methods to accelerate climate aviation neutrality"). This project has been submitted in the call HORIZON-CL5-2024-D5-01, topic 7.

Other areas of research include:
- the assessment of the impact of HYPERSOLVER concept on the organisation of the air navigation services (acceptability by the controllers, identification of new needs e.g. training etc.)
- the assessment of safety risks and benefits with HYPERSOLVER
- a Cost Benefit Analysis of HYPERSOLVER solution

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