Aerospace Industry
Aerospace industry
Closing the Aerospace Skills Gap with XR
The aerospace industry stands at a pivotal moment. As aircraft systems become more sophisticated and global fleets continue to expand, the aerospace industry faces a critical shortage of qualified maintenance technicians. Conventional training methods are struggling to keep pace with the demand for skilled professionals capable of upholding safety, reliability, and rigorous regulatory compliance.
MOTIVATE XR Pilot 1 transforms maintenance training through:
- Immersive Simulations: High-fidelity, hands-on practice in a safe environment.
- Rapid Scalability: Consistent training across multiple sites and aircraft models.
- AI-Driven Insights: Real-time feedback to accelerate skill mastery and safety.
Partners involved:
OVERVIEW & GOALS OF PILOT
Focus: Automating the conversion of massive aircraft digital mock-ups and PDF manuals into interactive XR training applications.
Process & Impact: Pilot 1 empowers instructors with no software development technical background to author complex procedures using the MOTIVATE XR suite.
Four MOTIVATE XR entities are collaborating with this pilot:
- Aerospace Valley: Leading Aerospace cluster, Aerospace Valley is the Pilot1 owner, responsible for coordination, scenario definition, partner coordination, and overall evaluation.
- Aerocampus Aquitaine: EASA PART 147-certified training centre, responsible for hosting XR training sessions and participant evaluation on real conditions (relevant population of Aero students, certified instructors)
- CS GROUP: French XR and simulation provider, enhancing its Inscape VTS no-code authoring platform for scenario creation, with a dedicated creation assistant to address MOTIVATE XR objectives, allowing interaction with AI models from SOP.
- Sopra Steria: Provides AI-powered knowledge models (GraphRAG) to enrich XR scenarios with interactive technical documentation.
Validation & Innovation: The pilot takes place on secured premises to protect sensitive industrial data. The results will be showcased in a public demonstration highlighting the platform’s efficiency in aviation maintenance.
Advantages for End User & Innovation Potential
- Streamlining the production of XR maintenance training systems.
- Reduction of errors when interpreting documentation and modelling the procedures.
- Reduction of the time and costs to produce an XR maintenance training system.
- Making training more attractive and enabling to address the lack of maintenance technicians.
- Improving quality of training while reducing the necessity to immobilise real aircraft.
- Creation of new products (XR training systems) that can be sold to the airlines.
Achievement & Results
Training Context & Objectives: The beta Release use-case was elaborated with the industrial collaboration of Liebherr Aerospace. The beta use case focused on the efficacy of the MOTIVATE XR platform for training technicians in the inspection of an Airbus A320 air conditioning pack, manufactured by Liebherr Aerospace, specifically targeting the Primary Heat Exchanger (PHX) procedure. By simulating the disassembly, visual inspection, and reassembly of this complex component, the scenario integrated realistic interactions and error management to reflect operational demands. The expected outcomes included increased maintenance accuracy and speed, a more proficient use of XR tools to interpret technical manuals, and enhanced capabilities for supervisors to monitor and assess trainee performance within the virtual environment.
The evaluation yielded an overall positive assessment, with participants praising the tool’s intuitive design, high-quality graphics, and the significant time savings provided by AI-driven scenario generation. These results confirm the potential of MOTIVATE-XR to transform aircraft maintenance training by delivering a realistic, portable, and efficient educational environment.
What’s Coming Next
The next step is to prepare the final MOTIVATE XR release, which will include:
- New Pilot Cases with additional aerospace companies and a showcase of the final release features.
- Measurement of Announced Benefits through a structured evaluation framework focused on key performance indicators to demonstrate tangible impact of the MOTIVATE XR solution
- Reduction in Time and Cost for XR Training Development
- Training More Engaging and addresses the shortage of maintenance technicians.
- Improved Training Quality with Minimal Aircraft Downtime
- Error Reduction through AI-Powered Conversion Tools
VIDEO SECTION
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