Recorders, Reasoners and Artificial Intelligence – Integrated Diagnostics on Military Transport Aircraft

A research group at Boeing has developed a prototype for an integrated diagnostic system to optimize maintenance on military transport aircraft by decreasing maintenance costs and increasing aircraft availability. The integrated diagnostic system comprises an on-board recorder, and a ground-based reasoner that analyzes the recorded data, to optimize maintenance. The functions of the ground-based reasoner (GBR) include identification of root-cause, filtering of false alarms, and prioritization of maintenance actions. The technologies used include expert systems/fast state recognition methods, data mining technologies and Bayesian analyses. The ground-based reasoner provides an open plug-n-play software framework for incorporating these technologies into a software tool, for field maintenance. The tool has a simple, intuitive graphic user interface that is designed to help the end-user, the maintenance technician, with everyday maintenance tasks. The integrated diagnostic system prototype is currently undergoing testing on pre-delivery test flights for the C-17 military transport, at a Boeing facility, and initial results in applying the system to the aerial delivery subsystem and the hydraulic subsystem are discussed