Analysis of Traffic Conflicts in a Mixed-Airspace Evaluation of Airborne Separation Assurance

A pair of human-in-the-loop simulation evaluations of a distributed air/ground separation assurance system have been conducted to investigate the function allocation between humans and automation systems as well as ground-based and airborne agents in the Next Generation Air Transportation System and beyond. This paper focuses on an analysis of certain critical conflicts observed between self-separating aircraft and ground-managed traffic in the same airspace. The principal cause of each conflict is identified and potential mitigations are discussed, such as: the sharing of trajectory intent information between the ground and the air; more cautious trajectory planning by the self-separating aircraft; and more equitable rules-of-the-road between the self-separating aircraft and ground-managed aircraft. This analysis will inform the ongoing design of an airborne separation assurance automation tool.