INDUSTRY FOCUS AEROSPACE
Professor Iain Gray, director of Aerospace at Cranfield University, explains why British industry needs to be involved in shaping the future of air travel
D
espite once being the world-leader in the development of aviation
technologies, the UK is now more likely to be designing wing and engine components than whole aircraft. However, British industry needs to be involved in shaping the future – and not just of the next generation of aircraft, but entire systems of air travel. Catching up will soon be much harder than ever before, because we’re on the brink of a new revolutionary phase in air technologies via digital aviation and the use of autonomous systems: integrated, Artificial Intelligence-driven travel. If we’re not to be a bit part player then there needs to be a shift in attitudes to the role of design. Government policy and industry focus has been on the importance of high- value manufacturing to the positioning of UK businesses in the global market. Although a common sense approach, it’s been a narrowing of attention away from original strengths and principles. We need to be global leaders in high-value design if we’re to maintain a long-term role in high-value manufacturing. As the reputation of British engineering
begins to fade, being too dependent on the excellence of specialist, small-scale manufacturing, then there is the prospect of eventually losing our involvement with the largest overseas aerospace industry businesses.
DESIGNING THE future of aviation
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY There are going to be major benefits from the arrival of what’s being described as the ‘third revolution’, fifty years on from the major economic and social changes resulting from when technologies like pressurised cabins and gas turbine engines made mass air travel the norm. Digital
be delays anyway, given the level of data-driven airspace management and automated aircraft maintenance. In reality, however, none of these benefits for industry and passengers are guaranteed at this stage. Individual trends of autonomous technologies exist but haven’t been fully tested. We don’t yet
“We’re on the brink of a new revolutionary phase in air technologies via digital aviation and the use of autonomous systems: integrated, Artificial Intelligence-driven travel. If we’re not to be a bit part player then there needs to be a shift in attitudes to the role of design”
aviation is predicted (in a World Economic Forum report 2017) to lead to a $700 billion saving by 2025 in terms of reduced environmental impacts, higher levels of security and safety, and cost savings for customers. The increased profitability of this more efficiently organised autonomous model for the aviation and travel industry as a whole is expected to generate an added $305 billion. Within the next ten years, there is the potential for the passenger experience to be transformed. Bags could be collected from home by an autonomous vehicle, scanned and checked en route; so by the time you have been transported to the airport (with security checks made by the vehicle itself) you can walk to the departure lounge, where your option for food and drink is waiting for you. Any ongoing transport links will have already been arranged based on a knowledge of flight times; and there are less likely to
know how systems will work together, or where the problems will come from when they’re being used in a real-world context. We don’t know what kinds of alternative and compromise models will be needed to balance the human and the autonomous. Such a data-driven operation is dependent on impeccable information security, as well as widespread international co-operation in the integration of technologies and air travel policies. Environmental benefits will mostly come from the development and mass adoption of electric aircraft.
At Cranfield we’re setting ourselves up to be a holistic lab for design, testing and manufacture, acting as the UK’s research airport, explains Gray
32 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 | DESIGN SOLUTIONS
THE IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN So we’re back to the importance of high-value design – in everything from the development of third revolution-ready aircraft to autonomous maintenance vehicles, passenger sensors and the data analysis that turns all the noise of complexity into a harmonious operation. At Cranfield we’re setting ourselves up to be a holistic lab for design, testing and manufacture, acting as the UK’s research airport. Alongside facilities like the on-campus airport and smart road for testing autonomous vehicles, there is the Aerospace Integration Research Centre (AIRC) and Digital Aviation Research and Technology Centre (DARTeC), which all together provides the kind of environment needed to test and demonstrate what’s possible in the new world of aviation. Given its heritage in aerospace, UK industry should be, and needs to be, much more than a niche partner. That means taking ownership of the third revolution, creating its own models and, most of all, starting with big plans for design.
Cranfield University
www.cranfield.ac.uk/themes/aerospace
/ DESIGNSOLUTIONS
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