Defining the future

Phantom Works researchers work to understand technology drivers for the 21st century air transportation system

BY TOM KOEHLER


Super hypersonic aircraft that fly on the edge of space. Vertical-takeoff-and-landing "air taxis." Personal air vehicles guided by a sophisticated air traffic management system. Autonomous systems that could repair the environment.

Those are just some of the products presently beyond our reach that could emerge during the next 100 years. Enabling technologies, currently being studied at Boeing, will help the global commercial air transportation system become more capable, as well as more efficient and safe.

Research-and-development teams in Boeing Phantom Works have been considering the long-term possibilities—in light of the broad range of evolving geopolitical and environmental factors that have shaped the aerospace industry recently and over the past 100 years. They have also been looking at the horizon of rapid technology evolution and anticipating the needs of future customers.

"World events, population growth and shifting environmental perspectives will continue to shape the direction of the aviation industry and the resulting requirements for new technologies and systems," said Pam Drew, Phantom Works vice president of Engineering and Information Technology, who addressed the subject this summer at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of powered flight.

"By anticipating trends in the new global economy and community, we are anticipating the requirements of key stakeholders in the industry," Drew said. "We are working to have a thorough understanding of the enabling technologies that will help them meet their needs and drive the advance of the commercial air transportation system in the 21st century."

The AIAA presentation, co-authored by Drew and 10 other Phantom Works leaders, examined technology needs in the context of the changing requirements of aerospace industry owners, operators and customers.

OWNERS' FUTURE NEEDS

Over the next 100 years, the system owners—airlines or freight movers, for example—will want new platforms to meet a variety of evolving needs.

Super/hypersonic airplanes that fly on the edge of space, for instance, might be needed for intercontinental business travelers. Ultra-quiet vertical takeoff and landing "air taxis" might be required to move people from local parking lots to urban multi-modal transportation centers. Personal air vehicles capable of landing in an owner's driveway, operating under the guidance of an integrated air traffic management system, could even emerge some time during the next 100 years. And autonomous systems might be developed to enable new services such as repair of the Earth's ozone layer and cleanup of hazardous materials.

Building and maintaining these products and systems will require, among other things:

• Super-efficient platform technologies. Advances in materials, nanotechnologies, coatings, insulation materials and highly integrated structures will pave the way for lighter airplanes that are easier to build and maintain, as well as able to withstand the high-temperature environments of hypersonic flights.

• Clean platform technologies. With protection of the environment a high priority, clean platform technologies involving fuel cells, advanced electrical actuation capabilities and alternative energy sources such as hydrogen will continue to be explored.

• Morphing structures. In the future, airplanes will utilize "morphing" structural elements that reconfigure aerodynamic surfaces "on the fly" to achieve maximum performance during each element of the flight profile.

• Mission-adaptive, multi-ship flight control. On-board, the "computer brain" of the airplane will receive data from distributed sensors and will use the information to update the "understanding" of the airplane's flight performance. Although rapidly progressing technology will create the ability to determine an airplane's in-flight location precisely with positioning technology, the need to operate safely in congested regions will push the need to develop technologies that manage the movement of each craft relative to both the ground and other airplanes.

• Super-integrated networked platforms. Future platforms will have a much greater level of avionics and communications integration that will enable systems capability including a more productive onboard office environment and richer in-flight entertainment, advanced capabilities for subsystem and system prognostics and health-status forwarding to ground-based maintenance staff, and advanced air-traffic management operations.

OPERATORS' FUTURE ROLE

In the forthcoming decades, advances in mission capabilities and continued demand for increased efficiencies will lead to new requirements and roles for the people involved in traffic control systems, maintenance operations and flight crews.

The Phantom Works researchers envision an integrated, multi-modal traffic infrastructure that would "move anyone or anything, anywhere, anytime—on time." This global utility would link ground, rail, maritime and air-and-space management systems in a true "system-of-systems" architecture.

Building blocks of the system would involve the creation of a secure, common information network that would enable operators, controllers and other ground personnel to improve collaborative decision-making, allowing faster and more informed decisions in "non-normal" situations including emergencies, congestion and severe weather conditions. It also would require the application of high-fidelity "trajectory- based" operations using trajectories taken from vehicle management systems in the air, on land or on the sea that can be used to automatically detect deviations from approved plans, and dynamically re-plan routes. In addition, it would require development of a global control navigation system to improve security, safety, capacity and efficiency.

In the air traffic segment of the transportation realm, Boeing is already at work creating the future. Boeing Air Traffic Management is working with several other business units on a series of projects designed to prove the feasibility of a number of the building blocks noted above.

In aviation, enabling technology involving advanced decision-support tools offers the potential to enhance air- space- and airport-utilization efficiency while maintaining or improving existing safety margins. Examples include

• Digital communications management aids that assist in message prioritization and verification.

• User-preferred routing, flight-plan optimization and flight path conflict resolution.

• Dynamic re-sectorization of air-traffic control centers to manage controller workload actively.

• Sequencing of arrival aircraft to maintain safe spacing throughout the descent regime.

• Establishing and monitoring reduced aircraft separation for optimum runway use.

Future aerospace vehicles will also be designed with technology to allow significantly improved safety and operability. This technology will include advanced vehicle health monitoring and management systems that will diagnose aircraft health and predict future problems before they occur, which would help reduce costly unscheduled maintenance.

To cope with the relentless demands of increased system capacity and performance efficiency, along with the need to maintain or improve current levels of operational safety and security, flight crews will need to become super-efficient. Crews will need to rely more on automation, and the human-automation interfaces must be robust, reliant and error-tolerant. Key technologies to enable this capability include synthetic vision, holographic imaging, touch-sensitive interfaces, 3-D auditory displays, speech recognition, intelligent flight controls, and interaction with autonomous vehicle operations.

CUSTOMERS' FUTURE EXPECTATIONS

End customers—passengers and cargo movers, for example —will continue to increase their expectations about quality of service and convenience in using the air transportation system. Two areas of focus will be

• Passenger information services. The future traveler will expect better passenger information services that will follow him or her through all modes of transportation. Future generations of information services will provide ubiquitous, secure, integrated travel and business data in a seamless environment through portable, wireless and even wearable high-bandwidth telecommunication and computing devices.

• Asset flow control and services. In the future, flow control of passengers, luggage, cargo containers and transportation platforms will be markedly improved over today's logistics systems, taking advantage of a global information grid enabled by a network-centric operations approach. Radio frequency identification chips, no larger than a grain of salt, will transmit signals that will be picked up by sensors that will allow better tracking of assets. Kinetic differential GPS technology will be utilized within buildings, as well as outside to provide positioning information accurate to several centimeters. This technology will provide constant update of the movement of assets as they flow through an airport terminal area, for example. More information can then be tracked regarding the flow of assets and will enable ultra-efficient, integrated supply chain management across suppliers, distributors and inventories. The technology also will help increase security, providing "smart" shipping containers and passenger baggage.

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Through work on hundreds of research-and-development programs, people in Phantom Works are addressing all of these enabling technology issues and more.

"We are the catalyst for innovation in helping Boeing be the aerospace leader in the 21st century," Drew said. "Our goal is to help the commercial air transportation system become truly safer and more efficient."