Helicopter technology rarely stays static for long. Although the fundamental features of helicopters as we know them haven’t changed much in the decades since their first invention, numerous details have. In fact, major parts of their performance and design are constantly shifting into new performance metrics.
This innovation applies to both civilian and military chopper designs and frequently appears on the horizon even if it doesn’t always garner much news. One recent case is a perfect example.
The technology in question has been dubbed the Virtual Sensing Technologies for Accelerometer Reconstruction program. If you think this is quite a mouthful, calling it VSTAR works too.
VSTAR Technology Program
The VSTAR program has mainly been sponsored by the U.S. Joint Artificial Intelligence Center,(JAIC) in a R&D partnership between the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the U.S. Air Force. While complex in its details, VSTAR basically uses a blend of artificial intelligence technology, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), flight data analytics and simulations to improve helicopter availability by reducing the need for untimely maintenance events.
Under the flood of acronyms surrounding it, the technology itself is quite interesting and has the potential to be extremely useful. By being able to closely predict a helicopter’s maintenance needs and service life, operators of chopper fleets (the U.S. Military in particular for now) can act in advance to be ready for either event.
This lets maintenance schedules work in such a way that they rarely if ever interfere with usability needs. It also helps helicopter-owning organizations avoid major logistical bottlenecks for the upkeep of their rotary birds.
Now obviously, if you’re looking at the owner and operator of just a single chopper or no more than a few of them, VSTAR doesn’t seem like such a pressing need. But even in these cases, its usefulness is easy to see: if an organization depends on just a couple of aircraft for its operations, knowing in advance when they’re likely to break down can be a lifesaver for crucial operations.
In the case of giant organizations like the U.S. military or Coast Guard, which have to juggle and try to predict the upkeep of hundreds of helicopters, a program like VSTAR could be a remarkable achievement indeed.
But how does VSTAR work?
Here’s an example:
An initial problem that helped kick-start the program was the tendency of accelerometers found onboard HH60G Pave Hawk helicopters used by the military to become frozen and unusable.
These sensing devices are located at the base of the main rotors of these chopper models and offer maintenance crews data about the kinds of load stresses that a helicopter went through. However, in cases where they simply stop working the maintenance people that take their measurements assume that the chopper in question went through extreme stresses and then take it out of service for repairs.
Because the accelerometer simply froze without having actually been stressed by operational traumas, it means that the helicopter is often taken out of service needlessly. This is where VSTAR comes into play.
The program basically uses Deep Neural Net (DNN) AI technology to recreate the missing data from frozen accelerometers and supplements it with further data streams that were picked out of the choppers health and usage monitoring system (HUMS). By combining the two sources of flight telemetry information, VSTAR then reconstructs any missing accelerometer flight data to create a much more accurate performance picture.
Other Branches Adapting
The above is just one use case for this new helicopter technology. The U.S. Air Force plans on having many others. This is partly why it has already adopted and deployed VSTAR technology into its Arcraft Structural Integrity Program (ASIP).
The Navy, Army and Coast Guard are now also in talks for adopting their own variants of the new analytics technology into their own chopper fleets.
To cut a long story short and skip over a fair number of technical use details, the bottom line is that VSTAR’s basic operational system can soon possibly be used in a whole range of aircraft, naval ships, submarines, land vehicles and even spacecraft. If the projected savings of using VSTAR in Air Force helicopters alone run into the millions, the potential savings of applying the technology across the board could easily reach billions over time. Technology like this has a way of filtering down into the private sector as well, and could sooner or later see widespread use for the private aircraft fleets of sophisticated charter air services like Fair Lifts. This of course will mean better client service and availability.