A Temporal Barrier Framework for Collision Avoidance in Multi-Agent Autonomous Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Operating teams of autonomous aircraft in dynamic, uncertain, and potentially adversarial environments requires safety protocols that are reliable yet selective, and allow agents to fly in close proximity while making progress toward mission objectives. We introduce adversarial time-to-collision (aTTC), a risk metric that quantifies, for a given agent, how quickly any surrounding agent could reach it assuming adversarial intent. We embed aTTC into the control barrier function (CBF) framework, defining the barrier directly in time rather than distance or velocity. The resulting aTTC-CBF is inherently anticipatory: agents modulate their own velocity based not on whether a peer is on a collision course, but on how quickly one could reach collision given its dynamical constraints. A differentiable neural-network surrogate makes the aTTC computable in real time within a standard CBF quadratic program. Across long time-horizon simulations of 3D independent-pursuit and formation-flight scenarios, the aTTC-CBF achieves up to twice the waypoint progress at half the collision rate of a higher-order distance-based CBF baseline.