Joost Ellerbroek

Delft University of Technology | TU · Department of Control and Operations (C&O)

Future high traffic densities with drone operations are expected to exceed the number of aircraft that current air traffic control procedures can control simultaneously. Despite extensive research on geometric CR methods, at higher densities, their performance is hindered by the unpredictable emergent behaviour from surrounding aircraft. In respons...

The Metropolis II project aimed to study the impact of centralised separation management for urban aerial mobility. Three concepts were developed in this study: a fully centralised, strategically separated concept, a hybrid concept featuring centralised strategic separation and distributed tactical separation, and a fully distributed tactical conce...

In order to enable the safe and efficient integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles into very low level airspace, current day research focuses on the development of new traffic services and procedures. One of these is the geovectoring protocol, which aims to reduce traffic complexity by setting limits on the allowed ground speed, course, and vertical...

Air traffic demand has increased at an unprecedented rate in the last decade (albeit interrupted by the COVID pandemic), but capacity has not increased at the same rate. Higher levels of automation and the implementation of decision-support tools for air traffic controllers could help increase capacity and catch up with demand. The air traffic cont...

Future operations involving drones are expected to result in traffic densities that are orders of magnitude higher than any observed in manned aviation. Current geometric conflict resolution (CR) methods have proven to be very efficient at relatively moderate densities. However, at higher densities, performance is hindered by the unpredictable emer...

Current predictions on future drone operations estimate that traffic density orders of magnitude will be higher than any observed in manned aviation. Such densities redirect the focus towards elements that can decrease conflict rate and severity, with special emphasis on airspace structures, an element that has been overlooked within distributed en...

Current predictions for future operations with drones estimate traffic densities orders of magnitude higher than any observed in manned aviation. Such densities call for further research and innovation, in particular, into conflict detection and resolution without the need for human intervention. The layered airspace concept, where aircraft are sep...

Over the next decades, it is expected that the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in the airspace will grow rapidly. Both the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) have already stated that aircraft operating autonomously or beyond their operators' line of sight are required t...

Current estimates show that the presence of unmanned aviation is likely to grow exponentially over the course of the next decades. Even with the more conservative estimates, these expected high traffic densities require a re-evaluation of the airspace structure to ensure safe and efficient operations. One structure that scored high on both the safe...

Metropolis II aims to provide insights in what is needed to enable high-density urban air operations. It does this by investigating the foundation for U-space U3/U4 services. The final goal is to provide a unified approach for strategic deconfliction, tactical deconfliction, and dynamic capacity management. Highly-dense operations in constrained ur...

The rate of urbanization is expected to continue increasing [1]. This has led to an interest in using drones and air taxis for urban transportation in place of the current methods, which often lead to road congestion. In most places urban air operations will happen above buildings. However, in many cities with large skyscrapers it may not be effici...

The interest for using small aircraft for missions in urban airspace is growing for applications like parcel deliveries. Research shows that conventional airspace structure and conflict detection and resolution techniques are not suitable for maintaining a high level of safety in constrained urban environments, especially when aircraft are restrict...

Package delivery via autonomous drones is often presumed to hold commercial and societal value when applied to urban environments. However, to realise the benefits, the challenge of safely managing high traffic densities of drones in heavily constrained urban spaces needs to be addressed. This paper applies the principles of traffic segmentation an...

The capacity of the current system of air traffic is rapidly reaching a limit with the increasing demand for air transportation. Expected future traffic densities not only make automated conflict detection and resolution a necessity, but also force a re-evaluation of coordination elements to decrease conflict rate and severity. It has been acknowle...

Road traffic delay and urban overcrowding are increasing rapidly all over the world. As a result, several companies have proposed the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) as an alternative to road-based transportation. These small autonomous drones are expected to operate within a thin airspace band (Very Low Level) in high traffic densiti...

Purpose of Review A lot of research into decentralised, state-based conflict detection and resolution, or detect and avoid algorithms has been executed. This paper explains the essential properties of state-based conflict detection and reviews the work in the context of applications for not only manned but also unmanned aerial vehicles, where this...

Current investigations into urban aerial mobility, as well as the continuing growth of global air transportation, have renewed interest in conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) methods. The use of drones for applications such as package delivery, would result in traffic densities that are orders of magnitude higher than those currently observed...

Modern aircraft can be equipped with a flight envelope protection system: automation which modifies pilot control inputs to ensure that the aircraft remains within the allowable limits. Overruling the pilot inputs may lead to mode confusion, even when visual or auditory feedback is provided to alert pilots. We advocate using active control devices...

Large-scale adoption of drone-based delivery in urban areas promise societal benefits with respect to emissions and on-ground traffic congestion, as well as potential cost savings for drone-based logistic companies. However, for this to materialise, the ability of accommodating high volumes of drone traffic in an urban airspace is one of the bigges...

Bird strike prevention in civil aviation has traditionally focused on the airport perimeter. Since the risk of especially damaging bird strikes outside the airport boundaries is rising, this paper investigates the safety potential of operational bird strike prevention involving pilots and controllers. In such a concept, controllers would be equippe...

Involving air traffic controllers and pilots into the bird strike prevention process is considered an essential step to increase aviation and avian safety. Prior to implementing operational measures such as real-time warning systems, it is vital to evaluate their feasibility. This paper studies the efficacy of a bird strike advisory system for air...

Modern aircraft use a variety of fly-by-wire control devices and combine these with a flight envelope protection system to limit pilot control inputs when approaching the aircraft limits. The current research project aims to increase pilot awareness of such a protection system through the use of force feedback on the control device, i.e., haptics....

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have been in civil use for several years. A new risk-based approach to approval was developed by the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking of Unmanned Systems (JARUS) which relies on the so-called Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) for the specific category. Operational authorization is based on the assessment usi...

The use of drones for applications such as package delivery, in an urban setting, would result in traffic densities that are orders of magnitude higher than any observed in manned aviation. Current geometric resolution models have proven to be very efficient at relatively moderate densities. However, at higher densities, performance is hindered by...

The use of drones for applications such as package delivery, in an urban setting, would result in traffic densities that are orders of magnitude higher than any observed in manned aviation. Such densities not only make automated conflict detection and resolution a necessity, but it will also force a reevaluation of aspects such as centralised vs. d...

Driven by rising consumer demand, interest is growing in the application of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for the last-mile delivery of small express packages and fast-food meals in cities. To be realised, this would require the Very Low Level (VLL) urban airspace to be able to cope with high traffic densities of commercial delivery...

Der Betrieb unbemannter Fluggeräte (UAS) erfolgte lange Zeit außerhalb der geltenden Regulierungen, wie sie aus der bemannten Luftfahrt seit etlichen Jahren bekannt und europäisch harmonisiert sind. Durch die kommerziell getriebene Entwicklung von UAS, die auch immer mehr Einsatzmöglichkeiten eröffnen, ist der Regulierungsprozess auch hier stärker...

Air traffic simulations serve as common practice to evaluate different concepts and methods for air transportation studies. The aircraft performance model is a key element that supports these simulation-based studies. It is also an important component for simulation-independent studies, such as air traffic optimization and prediction studies. Commo...

The use of drones for applications such as package delivery, in an urban setting, would result in traffic densities that are orders of magnitude higher than any observed in manned aviation. Current geometric resolution models have proven to be very efficient. However, at the extreme densities envisioned for such drone applications, performance is h...

Current investigations into urban aerial mobility, as well as the continuing growth of global air transportation, have renewed interest in Conflict Detection and Resolution (CD&R) methods. With the new applications of drones, and the implications of a profoundly different urban airspace, new demands are placed on such algorithms, further spurring n...

Air traffic simulation is a common practice for air transportation studies to evaluate different concepts and methods. The aircraft performance model is a key element that supports these simulations based studies. It is also an important component for simulation independent studies such as air traffic optimization and prediction. Commonly, most of...

Lack of trust and lack of acceptance caused by strategic mismatches in problem-solving have been identified as obstacles in the introduction of workload-alleviating automation in air traffic control. One possible way to overcome these obstacles is by creating automation capable of providing personalized advisories conformal to the individual contro...

In air traffic management research, aircraft performance models are often used to generate and analyze aircraft trajectories. Although a crucial part of the aircraft performance model, the aerodynamic property of aircraft is rarely available for public research purposes, as it is protected by aircraft manufacturers for commercial reasons. In many s...

Collisions between birds and aircraft pose a severe threat to aviation and avian safety. To understand and prevent these bird strikes, knowledge about the factors leading to these bird strikes is vital. However, even though it is a global issue, data availability strongly varies and is difficult to put into a global picture. This paper aims to clos...

Several modern aircraft use a passive control manipulator: a spring–damper system that generates command signals to the flight control computers in combination with a flight envelope protection system that limits pilot inputs when approaching the aircraft limits. This research project aims to increase pilot awareness of this protection system throu...

The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data has become one of the most popular sources of data for trajectory-based ATM studies. It is can be received in most of the world without restrictions. Extended coverage can be achieved with a network of low-cost receivers and satellites. However, the fact that ADS-B is designed to contain o...

In the coming years, aviation will have to cope with an increase in the number of aircraft, and of drones purchased in the open market. The human intervention of Air Traffic Management (ATM) will be overburden with guaranteeing flight safety with hundreds of manned aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating simultaneously. Conflict Reso...

To facilitate the increasing amount of air traffic, current and future decision support tools for air traffic management require an efficient and accurate trajectory prediction. With uncertainty inherent to almost all inputs of a trajectory predictor, the accurate prediction is not a simple task. In this study, Monte Carlo simulations of a ground-b...

Current bird strike prevention at airports is performed by wildlife control units and concentrates mainly on keeping birds from the perimeter. This research paper focuses on an approach for procedural bird strike prevention involving pilots and air traffic controllers in the process. A system using bird movement information from radar to predict po...

To analyse bird strike occurrences as well as the effect of operational risk-reducing measures, a fast-time simulation environment was developed. It allows to simulate bird movement and air traffic simultaneously and to detect collisions as well as near misses between birds and aircraft. The set-up was validated with Monte-Carlo simulations involvi...

Lack of trust has been identified as an obstacle in the introduction of workload-alleviating automation in air traffic control. The work presented in this paper describes a concept to generate individual-sensitive resolution advisories for air traffic conflicts, with the aim of increasing acceptance by adapting advisories to different controller st...

Lack of trust has been identified as an obstacle in the introduction of workload-alleviating automation in air traffic control. The work presented in this paper describes a concept to generate individual-sensitive resolution advisories for air traffic conflicts, with the aim of increasing acceptance by adapting advisories to different controller st...

This paper presents a collision avoidance algorithm to prevent bird strikes for aircraft departing from an airport. By using trajectory-information of aircraft and birds, the algorithm predicts potential collisions. Collision avoidance is performed by delaying departing aircraft until they can follow a collision-free trajectory. An implementation o...

This article investigates the estimation of aircraft mass and thrust settings of departing aircraft using a recursive Bayesian method called particle filtering. The method is based on a nonlinear state-space system derived from aircraft point-mass performance models. Using only aircraft surveillance data, flight states such as position, velocity, w...

The work presented in this paper is part of the SESAR Horizon 2020 exploratory research project DREAMS, which analyses operational and technical aspects of drone Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) for Europe's Un-manned Traffic Management system, U-Space. The main objective of DREAMS is to analyse the present and future needs of aeronautical...

The concept of autonomous drone delivery in urban areas has gained a favorable amount of media attention over the past few years. Companies such as Amazon, Uber and Matternet are investigating the use of drones to transport parcels in order to solve the disaggregate delivery (last-mile) problem. This solution could potentially reduce vehicular cong...

The aerodynamic properties of an aircraft determine a crucial part of the aircraft performance model. Deriving accurate aerodynamic coefficients requires detailed knowledge of the aircraft's design. These designs and parameters are well protected by aircraft manufacturers. They rarely can be used in public research. Very detailed aerodynamic models...

Open access to flight data from Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) has provided researchers with more insights for air traffic management than aircraft tracking alone. With large quantities of trajectory data collected from a wide range of different aircraft types, it is possible to extract accurate aircraft performance parameters....

Wind and temperature data are important parameters in aircraft performance studies. The lack of accurate measurements of these parameters forces researchers to rely on numerical weather prediction models, which are often filtered for a larger area with decreased local accuracy. Aircraft, however, also transmit information related to weather conditi...

This paper presents analytical models that describe the safety of unstructured and layered en route airspace designs. Here, 'unstructured airspace' refers to airspace designs that offer operators complete freedom in path planning, whereas 'layered airspace' refers to airspace concepts that utilize heading-altitude rules to vertically separate cruis...

The objective of this paper is to raise awareness about the significance of collecting and ensuring the quality of the obstacle data required for the safety of air navigation for both manned and unmanned aviation. This information could be of importance to geodetic, CityGML, 3D model and Building Information Management (BIM) community. With the adv...