Cabin personalisation
As part of its NBAA-BACE display,
Lufthansa Technik also showcased
how the aircraft cabin could be
personalised in the future. The
cabin system could glean data on
a passengers’ preferences – in
terms of lighting, music, meal times
and so on – from their PED when
connected to the nice CMS network.
Andrew Muirhead says this
fits with the trend for greater
personalisation, and for technology
that pre-empts customers’ needs
in an unobtrusive way. “That’s
exactly the direction we’re going
in – offering a high degree of
personalisation and a lot of hidden
ABOVE: EMBRAER’S UPPER
TECH PANEL
BELOW: LUFTHANSA TECHNIK
IS DEVELOPING VOICE CONTROL
businessjetinteriorsinternational.com
048 JANUARY 2020
technologies,” he explains. “That
kind of started with the Touch dial
on the Bombardier Global 7500,
which can be visible or hidden, but
we’re now going further through
things like hiding a wireless charger
in furniture and looking at surfaces
that you can interact with through
gesture control and things like that.
There’s a lot of things happening
on that front.”
Another example of a
technology designed to be similarly
unobtrusive is Embraer’s Upper
Tech Panel, whereby lighting
controls only appear as the
display is touched.
IFEC INNOVATIONS
Health monitoring
The rise of more electric aircraft is also
encouraging new developments. Astronics
says that airframers are pursuing more
intelligent systems to self-manage aircraft
health and provide increased diagnostic
and predictive capabilities. At NBAA-BACE
2019, the company showed how its power
distribution system can broadcast fault
data via wi-fi, from the aircraft to an outside
Voice control
The automotive and domestic sectors
have embraced voice control, but it
is not yet available for business jets.
Challenges include how the system
distinguishes which voice to respond
to when there are many present.
Andrew Muirhead says Lufthansa
Technik has an undisclosed launch
customer and will bring the technology
to an aircraft soon. More akin to how
voice control is used in cars than in
homes, passengers will probably
need to learn commands, because it
is an offline solution. “Solutions that
connect to the internet have access to
a huge library,” says Muirhead. “On
an aircraft you don’t know if you’re
going to have connectivity, so we have
to move the library on board, meaning
you do need to know how to talk to it.
So far, we’ve been pretty impressed
with its capabilities, even in a noisy
environment, but we’ve got to build
up that library to give multiple
ways of achieving your goal.
That’s a work in progress.”
Meanwhile, Hi Auto is
aiming to commercialise
an audio-visual solution
for speaker separation
and speech enhancement
in vehicles, to increase
reliability under any noise
condition. The technology
combines a microphone and a
camera that tracks the speaker’s
lips, and uses deep learning software.
Hi Auto is focussing on the automotive
market for now, but says there could
be applications in other fields.
point, for any powered equipment on
board. The company demonstrated how its
electronic circuit breaker unit could serve
as a high-fidelity sensor network, whereby
a wire (arc) fault could be distinguished from
an electrical load (motor) fault. Astronics
believes this could prevent no-fault-found
situations, saving the industry a lot of
money and downtime.
/businessjetinteriorsinternational.com