Guaranteed Fixed-Wing UAS Lateral Safety Via Control Barrier Functions

Despite the exponential and promising growth in urban air mobility, this sector faces multifaceted technological and societal challenges. Among the most critical is the development of safe, scalable collision avoidance systems capable of operating within the highly dynamic and congested airspace of metropolitan environments, where complex flight routes must navigate dense infrastructure, variable weather, and unpredictable traffic patterns. Traditional collision avoidance methods, such as potential field methods and TCAS, have limitations at low altitudes and in spatially congested metropolitan areas. This work presents a safety-critical control design using control barrier functions that not only guarantees safe operation but can also be applied to any existing system with minimal impact. Six degrees of freedom simulations show that the controller maintains the ego vehicle's safety across multiple scenarios and is capable of running in real-time for real-world implementation.