Structured-Corridor Safety-State Avoidance for Unmanned Ground Support Equipment at Aircraft Stands

Abstract

Aircraft stands impose asymmetric spatial and procedural constraints that cannot be represented by geometric free space alone. This study proposes a Structured Operation Corridor for unmanned ground support equipment (SOC-UGSE), which converts existing stand markings, aircraft-side boundaries, and operating rules into machine-interpretable corridor constraints and corridor-specific actions. The framework distinguishes a detour-permitted Longitudinal Transfer Corridor (LTC-UGSE) from a no-detour Lateral Service-Approach Corridor (LSAC-UGSE), and maps object class, motion state, distance, corridor occupancy, and available clearance to Normal, Warning, or Stop responses. Standard vision, ranging, LiDAR, and temporal-processing modules are used only to instantiate these decision variables. On a controlled 1:10-scale platform, the implemented perception chain achieved an overall corridor-perception success of 83.9%, while frame-level agreement with rule-derived reference states reached 90.95%. Across 63 independent interaction sequences, sequence-level success was 95.2%, with no complete missed-stop event or prohibited boundary crossing. In a separate balanced comparison of 150 sequences, SOC-UGSE achieved the highest overall scenario-response compliance of 94.7%, outperforming distance-only stopping and corridor-free obstacle avoidance by reducing unnecessary stops and prohibited actions, respectively. These results support the structured-corridor rule-execution concept under controlled scaled-platform conditions, rather than full-scale operational safety or deployment readiness.