Route planning for obstacle avoidance of UAM aircraft based on runtime assurance and APF

In urban air traffic environments, aircraft face dynamic and random obstacles that may cause single route planning algorithms to fail in completely avoiding collisions, thereby compromising flight safety. To address this issue, this paper proposes a runtime assurance(RTA) strategy that combines a three-dimensional artificial potential field method with a dynamic conflict resolution mechanism. This strategy integrates global route planning with dynamic emergency obstacle avoidance scenarios, switching between states based on aircraft status data. When the global route planning algorithm produces unsafe trajectories, the RTA switcher transfers control to the emergency obstacle avoidance algorithm. This enhances the aircraft's ability to avoid unforeseen random obstacles, and control is reverted to global route planning once the emergency is resolved. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to traditional single-method approaches, the proposed runtime assurance strategy shows higher planning efficiency and safety in dealing with dynamic random obstacles, proving its effectiveness and practicality.