Optimal control based coordinated taxiing path planning and tracking for multiple carrier aircraft on flight deck

Abstract Coordinated taxiing planning for multiple aircraft on flight deck is of vital importance which can dramatically improve the dispatching efficiency. In this paper, first, the coordinated taxiing path planning problem is transformed into a centralized optimal control problem where collision-free conditions and mechanical limits are considered. Since the formulated optimal control problem is of large state space and highly nonlinear, an efficient hierarchical initialization technique based on the Dubins-curve method is proposed. Then, a model predictive controller is designed to track the obtained reference trajectory in the presence of initial state error and external disturbances. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed “offline planning + online tracking” framework can achieve efficient and robust coordinated taxiing planning and tracking even in the presence of initial state error and continuous external disturbances.