Does ATM Need Centralized Coordination? Autonomous Conflict Resolution Analysis in a Constrained Speed Environment

The concept of Free-Flight, introduced in the 90s, opened a debate on the efficiency of letting aircraft deal with conflicts without any centralized control. Many models have been proposed for autonomous aircraft solvers but their efficiency is not well-known. In this paper, we experiment powerful algorithm derived from robotics which is able to deal with thousands of robots in very small spaces, and show how its performance plummets when speeds are constrained. We also compare this autonomous algorithm with a centralized approach using evolutionary computation on a complex example to point out their relative performance in a speed constrained environment. This comparison provides scientific arguments for the necessity of centralized air traffic control.