Receding horizon control for free-flight path optimization

This paper presents a Receding Horizon Control (RHC) algorithm to the problem of on-line flight path optimization for aircraft in a dynamic Free-Flight (FF) environment. The motivation to introduce the concept of RHC is to improve the robust performance of solutions in a dynamic and uncertain environment, and also to satisfy the restrictive time limit in the real-time optimization of this complicated air traffic control problem. Compared with existing algorithms, the new algorithm proves more efficient and promising for practical applications.