A Distributed Approach to Aircraft Conflict Resolution Based on Satisficing Game Theory

Along with the development of air transportation industry, aircraft in airspace increase dramatically which threats the airspace safety because of the great difficulty to keep required separation between aircraft when aircraft density is very high. Conflict resolution plays an important role in guaranteeing airspace safety by eliminating conflicts, which has drawn much attention. Compared with current approaches, we propose a multi-agent solution to aircraft conflict resolution based on satisficing game theory which considers the decreases in conflicts and economic losses. Firstly, aircraft involved in conflicts are assigned different statuses based on specially designed priority ranking mechanism. Then, they can choose the most satisficing strategy from policy set including five speed adjustment strategy with consideration of others’ preference. Finally, a new evaluation criterion based on Required Time Arrival (RTA) is introduced to ensure that the whole system can reach a socially coherent compromise. Simulation results on three classical scenarios show that our approach has strong adaptability and robustness in conflict resolution problem.