The optimal control of merging aircraft - Implementation of the hybrid air traffic controller.
The control of merging aircraft is formulated as a finite-time, quadratic optimal control problem of a linear system with state and control constraints. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the Hybrid Air Traffic Controller (HAC), which has been previously developed as a solution to this problem, may be easily implemented. Use is made of both the properties of the algebraic solution to the matrix Riccati equation and the structure of the linear model. This approach results in a real-time synthesis procedure for the HAC which does not rely on iterative numerical integration techniques.