LONDON--The machines are coming! As Arthur C. Clarke predicts in 2001: A Space Odyssey, intelligent machines are with us and will become ever more intelligent as time progresses. The speed at which new technology develops also will accelerate, spawning new designs, materials, production techniques, repair methodologies and robotic tools.

One of the prime beneficiaries will be aircraft safety, driven by onboard systems that not only monitor but accurately predict when worn or underperforming parts need replacing. These systems also may diagnose ad-hoc faults. So, could maintenance mechanics and technicians ultimately be made obsolete?

Axel Krein, SVP research and technology for Airbus, predicts the next decade will see a transition from health monitoring to health management systems (HMS) that predict faults or degradation and schedule maintenance automatically.

"Today's health monitoring systems simply record inflight data and alert ground maintenance systems when faults are detected, so the action taken is determined by maintenance teams," says Krein. "Future heath management systems will do this autonomously.

"Advanced software will analyze real-time data from the aircraft's different systems and, when a fault arises or when a component life is close to its limits, it will schedule maintenance automatically," he says. "This might include a range of scenarios from provisioning hangar space and maintenance teams to ordering spares and ensuring they're delivered to the right place at the right time. Importantly, no human involvement will be needed to do this and the maintenance will be scheduled to align with the aircraft's flight schedule."

For example, if the HMS warns that a component has 50 hours of life left, the aircraft can still complete its next scheduled sectors. Also, if the aircraft is close to a maintenance check, it may be possible to delay the maintenance to coincide with that check.

"This will not only minimize scheduled maintenance but potentially eradicate unscheduled maintenance," says Krein. "Moreover, as airlines begin to rely on efficient and reliable maintenance systems, spares and manpower provision can be reduced. However, these systems are unlikely to be available and integrated into an aircraft before 2020."

That said, this scenario could be much closer than Krein predicts. Honeywell's Kristen Law, marketing manager for condition-based maintenance, says that "maintenance action driven by machines" has been available through the HMS of new engine types and APUs for the past few years. In this case, real-time engine data sent to the ground is automatically fed to a Web-based system. This not only links to the engine or APU maintenance manual to specify the maintenance to be performed but also enables spare parts to be ordered.

On-condition Maintenance

Honeywell currently is testing a similar system for aircraft avionics, which gathers system data from aircraft's central maintenance computer and sends it to a website where fault codes are linked to specific maintenance actions. As with the engine HMS, data gathering, transmission and interpretation happen automatically with no human intervention between the data leaving the aircraft and the mechanics meeting the aircraft.