Conflict management between UAVs is one of the key aspects in developing future urban aerial mobility (UAM) spaces, such as the one proposed in U-Space. In the framework of tactical conflict management, i.e., with the UAVs in flight, this paper presents PCAN (Prediction-based Conflict-free Adaptive Navigation). This relatively simple navigation technique predicts the occurrence of the conflict and avoids it by modifying the velocity vector of the UAVs involved. The performance evaluation carried out demonstrates its effectiveness compared to similar techniques, even in high-density scenarios, while proving a low overhead in flight time or in the distance traveled by the UAVs to reach their destinations.
Keywords: conflict detection and resolution; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); urban air mobility (UAM).