Decentralized Coordination of Autonomous Traffic Through Advanced Air Mobility Corridors

2026-06-22

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of enabling efficient and safe operation of autonomous fixed-wing aircraft in advanced air mobility corridors without centralized control. The authors propose a fully decentralized, self-organizing framework that relies solely on local sensing and integrates decentralized coordination algorithms, autonomous flight control, dynamic spacing maintenance, and a lightweight tactical intervention mechanism. This approach supports autonomous transit in single, continuous, and forked corridor scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that aircraft adhere strictly to corridor boundaries over 94% of the time, require virtually no intervention under low-to-moderate traffic densities, and exhibit only modestly increased intervention rates at high densities, while maintaining high overall throughput. The work challenges the prevailing assumption that efficient corridor operations necessitate centralized management, thereby validating the feasibility and effectiveness of a decentralized architecture.

Abstract

The use of dedicated corridors for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) traffic is one of the most commonly proposed pathways to integrating them into existing airspace operations. Most prior research has focused on the design of networks of AAM corridors and conflict resolution for aircraft within corridors. It is also generally believed that while attractive from an implementation perspective, corridor-based operations may be inefficient, especially in the absence of centralized traffic management. In this paper, we show that contrary to this belief, it is possible for autonomous aircraft to learn to self-organize into corridor flows in decentralized settings. We illustrate our approach using scenarios in which fixed-wing aircraft need to safely and efficiently traverse (1) a single corridor with metering after the exit, (2) a sequence of two consecutive corridors, and (3) a corridor that splits into two. We find that in decentralized settings with only local information, the aircraft are able to conform to the corridor boundaries more than 94% of the time and reach their goal in a relatively efficient manner. Furthermore, tactical interventions to handle violations of the separation minimum are needed only infrequently in low- and medium-density settings. However, such tactical interventions become more frequently necessary only when traffic density is high.

Problem

• Advanced Air Mobility
• decentralized coordination
• autonomous aircraft
• airspace corridors
• traffic management

Innovation

• decentralized coordination
• Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)
• self-organization
• autonomous aircraft
• corridor-based operations