CHENNAI: With air passenger traffic growing exponentially, aircraft safety and maintenance is no joke. A new breed of aircraft maintenance and repair firms are utilising the new fangled science of predictive analytics, integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT), to predict not only component failures, but also monitor pilot stress levels.
The Chennai-based Ramco Systems, one of the leaders in technology solutions for Aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, is in the advanced stages of developing and testing three solutions that are set to increase safety for aircraft passengers several fold. Predictive Analysis combined with IoT is the fulcrum around which these solutions are being built on.
“200 GB of data is accumulated every time a flight is completed. We are in the business of interpreting this data,” pointed out CEO Virender Aggarwal. Ramco is in the process of developing a solution that predicts the likelihood of a component failing, down to the month making it possible to replace the part before it fails. “Typically, MRO has been focused on repairing a fault after it has happened. What we are doing is trying to predict these faults,” he said.
Another system under development is an armband that seeks to monitor and prevent over-stressed pilots from boarding a flight. “The armband monitors stress by observing the breathing patterns of pilots,” said Ramesh Sivasubramanian, head of Ramco’s Innovation Lab in Singapore that is churning out these solutions. “We are also developing a system that uses autonomous drones to scan an aircraft component to record any damage sustained by it,” he added. These drones can also be used to scan an entire aircraft in the same way, identifying glitches and stressed parts.
Ramco is already in the process of testing out several of these solutions. According to the company, the systems are being tested on the aircraft of one of its international clients, while several aviation sector companies from India have already expressed interest in adopting them.