Mixed-Reality Validation of Separation Assurance and Vector Field Guidance for Safe and Conformant Airspace Corridor Integration

Overview & Synopsis

To accommodate increasing demand for Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, UAS Traffic Management (UTM) systems must evolve to efficiently scale with higher traffic densities. At this stage, such evolution requires validation with real-world data and testing under realistic operational conditions. Current U-Space approaches ensure safety primarily through spatial and temporal allocation of operational volumes for flight plan authorisation; however, future scalability may require more dynamic flow management models. This paper presents a mixed-reality demonstration, generalisable for dimensionless scaling operations, of a shared airspace corridor where autonomous UAS follow a Guiding Vector Field (GVF), used for both path-following inside the corridor and smooth entry transitions from vertiports. It is complemented by a hybrid safety and centralised architecture that combines Control Barrier Function (CBF) regulating UAS speed for separation assurance, with an Artificial Potential Field (APF) algorithm for reactive collision avoidance. Deployed in a mixed-reality environment across 88 missions, including over 30 real-world flights, our framework successfully managed continuous, efficient and safe operations within a network of 7 vertiports, supporting up to 6 simultaneous operations inside a 20 × 20 metres shared cyclic corridor scenario with reliable path conformance.