Aerospace engineering consultancy Novel Engineering worked with STFC Hartree Centre to automate aircraft system Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA) by utilising AI effectively and reliably, through the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme.
Challenge
Safety is a priority in the aviation industry. Throughout the aircraft development lifecycle, safety analyses like Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA) are performed. FHAs are typically produced by expert safety engineers who analyse system designs to identify and classify functional hazards such as the loss of braking force control, according to industry standards. To accelerate the generation of FHAs, Novel Engineering Consultants sought to automate this process, partly using AI. However, AI models can produce inaccurate outputs, for instance when they lack relevant, up-to-date input data. Consequently, they could misclassify functional hazards, therefore requiring more work from an expert safety engineer to correct the outputs.
Approach
To help Novel Engineering Consultants automate FHAs, STFC Hartree Centre AI team worked on improving the reliability of outputs from AI tools. This work was supported by a £15,000 Innovate UK BridgeAI Innovation Voucher, which enabled the company to access AI expertise. By incorporating key aircraft system information to the database and setting clear boundaries for data access, the AI tool had more relevant context, allowing it to generate more accurate and useful outputs. We also worked on prompt engineering, which further improved the outputs in terms of factual accuracy and structural quality. Additionally, we initiated a rigorous evaluation process to ensure the robustness of the system. In combination, all these efforts form a proof-of-concept pipeline for FHA automation.
Benefits
By delivering a proof-of-concept pipeline, Hartree Centre AI researchers have laid the groundwork that enabled Novel Engineering Consultants to develop the proof-of-concept into a functional tool for automating FHAs. The tool has increased the efficiency of their aircraft safety analysis processes, resulting in cost and time savings on aerospace projects while maintaining the high safety standards that are critical in the aviation industry. Novel Engineering Consultants has also received mentorship from Hartree Centre AI researchers, who have helped to enhance their in-house AI capabilities and validate their other AI approaches developed alongside the FHA automation work.
Collaborating with the Hartree Centre was very beneficial to our organisation, particularly in developing an in-depth understanding of AI technologies and our ability to deploy them effectively.
– Alex Penny, Novel Engineering Consultants