Driven by the motto of ‘minimal human intervention, maximum combat potential’, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is moving towards automation of certain levels of maintenance and overhaul of fighter jets and copters by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics.

This would help IAF take inventory management to the next level and scale up capacity utilisation of machines and weapons so that the armed force is ready 24x7 in case of a war.

The IAF has reached out to IIT Mumbai and IIT Jodhpur for the use of AI and robotics in aircraft and helicopter maintenance respectively, guided by the strategy to replace men with machine in times ahead.

AI can help secure a 3-D model of any part and find out what kind of material it is.. To exploit AI, the IAF has launched a project for characterising 10,000 parts at a time. One of the challenges in maintaining a variety of fleets is that the same part has different part numbers for different fleet, Air Marshal CR Mohan told businessline about the in-house automation drive before he retired as Air Officer-in-Charge Maintenance on October 31.

“If you have a database of a data lake of 10,000 drawings, an AI algorithm scans these and finds out that drawing number 1,900 and 1,000 are actually the same part. So, even though the part numbers are different, we could optimise our inventory. It can result in tremendous amount of savings. Now, the trouble with aviation parts is that the same material composition treated differently will have different properties. So it’s not just geometry and material composition,” explained Air Marshal CR Mohan (Retd).

However, there is no need for a physical model. There are unsupervised learning methods in which you pump in all the engines’ data into a data lake. And there is a learning algorithm which can actually obtain insights for us. This is a project we are working on with IIT Mumbai, he noted.

The project is at a pre-financial approval stage. The specialists come up with proposals and the forces try to fund them. The industry is invited at the production stage.

Use of robots

The IAF is also resorting to AI for Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) of the aircraft.

Explaining its usage, Air Marshal Mohan (Retd) said that it is akin to a body camera on a technician looking at the airframe. If the smart glass points red at a place, you know that, for example, the panel is open or a rivet is popping up, and it can be fixed, he said.

The IAF is looking to start automation from the first stage, also called ‘Operating (O) level’, of maintenance and overhaul, which is done on the tarmac or field to ensure the aircraft is prepared for flying.

The project is at the finance clearance level. The remaining process of acquisition would involve, among others, getting a prototype of the project and scaling it up for production.

The varied possibilities that automation can bring include placing a robot instead of a person at the work spot, deploying small ball robots or snake robots inside the aircraft for inspection, he said. 

In case of civilian aircraft, small tools are already in use.

Robots for refuelling, driverless ‘supply mules’ for supply of weapons and other stuff for O-level maintenance, and towbarless tugs to tow aircraft are some other options available, as per the former senior IAF officer.

“Particularly for weapons production, weapons and production lines have to be automated. Today we know that a war is constrained by the number of designs you can make. We need industry 4.0.,” Mohan advocated.

According to him, the IAF is starting to discuss the usage of robotics with IIT Jodhpur.

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