978-1-61284-798-6/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
5A6-1
MODELING CONFLICTS RESOLUTION OF UNMANNED AIRCRAFT
SYSTEM USING A LIGHTWEIGHT DURATION CALCULUS
Diogo Branquinho Ramos
1,2
, Rovedy Aparecida Busquim e Silva
1
, Inaldo Capistrano Costa
1,3
,
Emilia M. Colonese
1
and José Maria Parente de Oliveira
1
1
Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA)
Pç. Mal. Eduardo Gomes, 50, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
2
National Institute for Space Research (INPE),
Av. dos Astronautas, 1758, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
3
Federal University of Maranhão,
Av. Dr. Anselmo, 2008 Campus VII, Codó, MA, Brazil
Abstract
Over the last two decades, an interesting area of
Brazilian military and civil sectors is the Unmanned
Aircraft Vehicle (UAV) development. This article
tackles the modeling of conflicts resolution of
Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) using a
lightweight Duration Calculus (DC) to verify if the
temporal specification and design of the system is
correct and to ensure formally that the system
implementation meets all its requirements. Moreover,
the article proposes a formal modeling (using DC) of
a conflicts resolutions set of rules, adapted from Free
Flight concept in Communications, Navigation and
Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM).
In the adapted approach to UAS, each UAV is
surrounded by an imaginary space of two cylinders,
which form, respectively, the protected zone and the
alert zone. The major contribution of this article is
structuring a new scenario application of the conflicts
resolution to UAS through formal modeling, using
the DC technique to confirm that the models could be
implemented without deadlocks and unreachable
states, as well as with satisfaction of temporal
restrictions. Furthermore, this work uses the state-of-
the-art practices in formal methods, including a
model checking tool to ensuring correct real-time
requirements specification of a real-time critical
system.
Introduction
It became extremely important for the Brazilian
military and civil sectors the deployment of
Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV). This vehicle
type can be employed in military and civil
recognition and surveillance missions, data link,
natural resources, energy and oil pipelines
monitoring, border security, public safety among
others [1]. The authors have developed features
related to low cost missions of UAV, in order to
reduce time between missions, to provide fast
conflict resolutions and graceful maintenance.
In this context some missions require that UAV
set their procedures at the same time, acting as UAS,
where each UAV performs a specific function in the
mission context. For example, a first UAV performs
the data link functionality, a second UAV follows a
moving target and a third UAV approach (attack or
intercept) the target.
Hence, trajectories conflicts must be rapidly
solved avoiding collisions between UAVs operating
in a same region, ensuring that each UAV is able to
fulfill the “Sense-and-Avoid” (S&A) [2], i.e.,
monitor all the surroundings of an UAV to maintain
the S&A of a collision. To ensure that critical
systems with real-time characteristics operate safely,
it is necessary to establish a rigorous requirements
specification.
Real-time Systems (RTS) need to react to certain
input stimuli within given time bounds. There are
many embedded safety-critical applications and each
requires real-time specification techniques.
The focus of this paper is on the formal
modeling of the conflicts rules resolutions for UAS.
Furthermore, we suggest a set of conflicts rules
resolutions adapted from the Free Flight Concept in
Communications, Navigation and Surveillance/Air
Traffic Management (CNS/ATM), but with
centralized control in an UAS Control Station, the
Duration Calculus (DC) application in formal