TangentAir

Mission

To eliminate mid-air conflicts through repulsive surface geometry, ensuring mathematically guaranteed separation for an autonomous and sustainable sky.

The challenge

Nowadays, Air Traffic Control (ATC) manages airspace sectors, which can become crowded and cause delays. The current solution to this problem is manual command issues by the ATC, which is reactive to the situations. Moreover, with the technological advancements, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and large drones are becoming more mainstream, meaning that the airspace will be even more crowded in the future. It is apparent that with the expected direction of advancement, a reactive solution to crowded airspace may be insufficient, which is what needs to be addressed.

The solution

The proposed solution will be the use of an algorithm to (partially) automate the air traffic. This is done by basing this algorithm on the Geometric Repulsion (Repulsive Surface) Theory, which assumes that the airborne vehicle is inside a flexible surface (tube). By doing so, the tube, which represents the flying path, will be optimized to minimize the time/fuel usage without it being overlapping with each other.