A PLM-based approach for un-manned air system design: A proposal

In the ACARE’s “Flightpath 2050 - Europe’s Vision for Aviation”, a declared objective is the seamlessly operation of the European air transport system through interoperable and networked systems allowing manned and unmanned air vehicles to safely operate in the same airspace. One of the crucial aim is to develop technological advances in civil applications and unmanned systems, in a more “designed to cost” and “electric” way. According to the above-mentioned vision, “occurrence and impact of human error is significantly reduced through new designs, training processes, technologies that support decision- making“. In addition, CTNA is starting to move in this direction, in order to develop innovative technologies for unmanned airplanes. This paper proposes a technological architecture for innovation on UAS (Unmanned Air Systems) piloting systems. The design of a UAS adopting a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform as repository for data-mining and decision support system is discussed; the vision is to manage the autonomous capabilities of the vehicle, based both on previously simulated scenario and on real-time calculation, to adapt the behavior of the vehicle on the real operational scenario. A further step could be the collaborative evaluation of the real operational scenario trough the integration of autonomous vehicles that interact and exchange own real behavior data. To manage this big amount of data, it is necessary to grant access to design data, through the access to the above-mentioned PLM platform. The advantages of this methodology is implicit in the point of view from which we approach the PLM data repository: the Product Data Record, that gathers data coming from all the phases of the life cycle of UAS, enables an on-time centralized data management. It allows companies to operate on a single, synchronized source for all product data, improving integrity and reliability and decreasing time and cost.