The engine-maker has tied up with Altair, a technology company that provides AI, software, and cloud solutions.

Rolls Royce Germany and Altair (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced in January a collaboration to use AI in the manufacture of aerospace engines. Rolls Royce Germany builds jet engines, components, parts and provides services to aviation customers, including Lufthansa, Airbus, Gulfstream, and Bombardier. (AVIATION TODAY)

Altair and RR

Altair provides simulation, AI and data analytics, and high-performance computing services to its engineering clients. It caters to industries such as aerospace, automotive, civil engineering, agriculture and construction, consumer goods, marine, rail, energy, telecom, and others.

It already counts Airbus Helicopters, Lockheed Martin, and Safran Seats as its aviation customers.

Altair will support Rolls Royce for the engineering, testing, and design of its aviation engines. The objective would be to reduce and accelerate certification and design iterations, reduce extensive physical testing, and improve product quality.

Furthermore, Altair will provide easy-to-use, low/no-code, yet flexible AI and machine learning tools. Therefore, RR engineers would themselves be able to glean insights from their data.

“Altair has unique domain expertise and best-in-class, low-code data analytics technology. This collaboration will enable us to bridge the gap between engineering and data science, and empower our engineers to truly be engineers, focused on extracting the benefits of machine learning and AI from our data,” said Dr. Peter Wehle, Head of Innovation and R&T, Rolls-Royce Deutschland, in a statement.

Moreover, the Altair Knowledge Works platform will enable Rolls Royce engineers to apply machine learning (ML) methods utilizing simulation data, test data, manufacturing data, and operational data.

Knowledge Works is designed so users can easily and efficiently access disparate data sources and formats in a low code/no-code environment.

Aerospace engineering, data science, and machine learning

Meanwhile, Rolls Royce has accumulated a massive trove of data on its engines from its world-renowned engine health monitoring services.

Sam Mahalingam, Chief Technical Officer of Altair told Aviation Today: “Aerospace engineers have the domain knowledge and are very close to data science. What they miss are the computer science and programming part. That’s why a low-/no-code solution is key to empower them to do it themselves after a few weeks / a couple of months.  That’s game-changing!”

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