Upgrading aerospace system architectures with AI and SysML v2 – Transcript
In this episode of Talking Aerospace Today, Todd Tuthill and Dale Tutt explore how artificial intelligence and SysML v2 fit into the evolution of systems engineering and building new system architectures in aerospace and defense.
Patty Russo: Greetings, and welcome to Talking Aerospace Today from Siemens Digital Industries Software. I’m Patty Russo and I’m responsible for global marketing in A&D here at Siemens. Thank you for joining us to pick up the conversation on the future of systems engineering and aerospace and defense. We’ll continue talking with Vice President of Aerospace, Defense, and Marine, Todd Tuthill, and our Vice President of Industry Strategy, Dale Tutt. Last time, we talked about how next level connectivity, integration and interoperability in aerospace design can change our approach to systems engineering, which is really what we need. We also discussed how other industries can learn from A&D, such as how to construct holistic systems engineering strategies. Let’s jump right back in. I’ll start with Todd. Did you want to expand on something from Dale’s last point?
Todd Tuthill: Yeah. Again, I was thinking about systems engineering as it relates to everyday safety and here’s an example. I won’t name that the brand in the company, but think about the problems that we saw a few years ago, people were buying these motorized scooters. They were parking them in their garage and they were catching on fire and they were burning houses down. That’s a systems engineering problem because when you think about batteries today, they hold an incredible amounts of energy. And if you don’t design the battery and the charging system to work properly, the batteries can overheat and catch fire. And it’s something as simple as a consumer electronics or a toy.
Todd Tuthill: And we have, our homes are full of small electronics and toys and things with batteries, and if the charging system for those batteries aren’t designed correctly with safety things with the safety processes in place, bad things happen. And that’s a system engineering problem, thinking about the ecosystem it sets in and thinking about how can things fail? What’s a bad day scenario and how can I design the battery, the pieces of electronics in the charging system, such that when failures happen and they will, they’ll fail safe, they won’t fail bad? And when the systems engineering and good design practices aren’t followed, bad things happen in something as simple as a piece of a consumer electronics or a toy.
Patty Russo: So what’s really exciting in, whether it’s the A&D industry in particular or the other industries that now need the dynamic technology and optimized approaches for systems engineering, is the developments with and the advancements with SysML v2 and AI and the opportunity for technology partnerships between companies to help solve for this because of that nature, that integration that’s required to fill the equation. So I’m curious, Todd, if you can comment on where a SysML V2, for example, fits into this equation or where AI fits, pick one and maybe Dale you can pick the other one, but let’s talk a little bit about what advances in the technology side of things are now better enabling not just space in A&D, but other industries to leverage some of this, these approaches and solutions for systems engineering.
Todd Tuthill: Yeah. When I think about new technology like AI or SysML v2, I go back to value, and I always start with the idea of this. This technology only matters if it brings value. So what, let’s talk, we’ll pick AI. What value can AI bring? And there’s a number of value propositions that AI has. In terms of knowledge capture, knowledge retention, in terms of, we talked about the five levels of digital transformation on this podcast a lot, but I always pivot back to that third step, automating the mundane, and there’s enormous opportunity.
Todd Tuthill: The tools that exist today, the things that companies like Siemens and other companies are shipping today, have real value in taking over and doing mundane things. And we see that in consumer products, now. We’re bringing industrial AI to this, and one of the key things about Industrial AI that’s so important is it’s robust. It gives companies the ability to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in very, very robust ways to first take over mundane things and then to do really higher level thinking, generative things and back to that idea we talked about earlier of really bringing products to market faster and multiplying the impact of workforce.
Todd Tuthill: And I talked earlier, I made the appeal to middle school and high school students about how cool aerospace engineering is. Well, the products are cool, but AI and Industrial AI specifically is going to make the use of the tools in the development of those products really cool and exciting as well. So, I think AI has a lot of promise in a lot of areas within the development of aerospace products.
Patty Russo: So Dale, I may be putting you on the spot, but Todd covered the AI piece of my question. Would love to just touch on where we are with SysML v2 and why that’s such a game changer on the landscape and going forward for systems engineering.
Dale Tutt: Well, when you asked Todd the question, you started with this SysML v2 first and he was supposed to take that one question, but all kidding aside, actually there is a bit of a relationship, and I’ll start with SysML v2 very quickly. I believe that SysML v2 is a very important step forward for systems engineering in general. Some of the challenges they had with SysML V1 and how the data was shared, it was very hard and there was some well documented cases and case studies by other organizations that highlighted some of the issues and challenges with SysML v2, I’m sorry, SysML v1. It was hard to share files between different systems that we’re modeling SysML v1. In some cases, even if you’re using the same system, if you would export and reimport, you wouldn’t get the same answer.
Dale Tutt: And so there were a lot of challenges with SysML v1, even in some of the simplest cases, but I think with the promises SysML v2 that is now more of a standard and the ability to have, openly share data across different systems. It’s going to provide a lot more consistency, but it’s also then, we mentioned earlier, a little bit of this democratizing access to space. I think that SysML v2, especially coupled with AI, is that it’s going to start democratizing systems engineering. Which is very important because you really, the companies going to be very successful, systems engineering is going to become part of their DNA, and it’s just going to be integrated with the rest of their solutions as an [unclear] and new products.
Dale Tutt: And so you need to have the systems engineering piece accessible. You also see that with a lot of the workforce challenges that companies have, they’re usually trying to hire systems and software engineers, and so one way to help solve that problem is to actually give more access to systems engineering and tools instead of having it be the realm of highly specialized people as we see with SysML v1 modelers today. So I think that SysML v2, because of its openness and because of it’s interoperability with some of the other systems, or sorry, some of the other solutions and tools that these companies will use, is it will start to tend to democratize systems engineering.
Dale Tutt: And just one little add-on with what Todd said, Todd covered the AIP’s extremely well that in automating the mundane. It’s a lot easier to do that with SysML V2 than with SysML v1. And so because of the way the language is written, and because of the way it’s set up, and so if you can really start to do that, now you’re making this technology and these capabilities available to a much broader set of your engineering team. It makes it much easier for it to become part of your DNA as an engineering company, and I think that’s when you’re going to start to see the greatest benefits.
Dale Tutt: That’s how companies are going to start designing new products faster, getting them to market faster, but more importantly, not having challenges with those products when they hit the market. You know, the examples that Todd gave about the batteries catching on fire, those are all problems that have to be solved after you’ve delivered millions of units of product to the to the field, and now you have a massive recall effort. And those kinds of things are really challenging for a company to absorb, and so the more you can avoid that, the better off you’re going to be as a company financially.
Patty Russo: So can I ask a “horse after the cart” question about SysML v2 and SysML v1? If you can in a short statement for those in the listening audience, what is SysML v2? Kind of at the, kind of a very fundamental question but probably good to level set everything that you just said about SysML v2 and where it’s going to play.
Todd Tuthill: I’ll take that. So when I think about SysML v1, SysML v1 is simply a language like French is a language or Spanish is language. SysLM v1 was designed to be the language of systems engineering, the way that systems engineers could describe in in an efficient way how they did their work. That’s SysML v1. SysML v2, again, Todd doesn’t like names. It implies by the name and it’s just an upgrade to SysML v1. It’s not. It’s completely a whole other thing. It’s, SysML v2, well you can do diagramming and there’s language to it, systems engineering is a framework for sharing digital information. That’s what it is. It’s an efficient way for disparate kinds of data to be shared and move around with a system of digital transformation. That’s really the heart of SysML v2 it’s the standard by which you do that.
Todd Tuthill: Oh, by the way, you can also do models with it. That’s really because the heart of SysML v2 is not the modeling, it’s not the diagrams, it’s the sharing. It’s the framework for sharing your information. That’s why I think the name of it is really misleading and people think, “Well, SysML v1 makes cool diagrams. That’s all I need. Why do I need cooler diagrams?” Well, you really don’t. What you want is the framework to share the information because SysML v1 was really, and the tools around it that were built around SysML v1 were really islands of data that couldn’t be shared. Whereas the fundamental underpinnings of SysML v2 was to solve that problem of islands of data and systems engineering, and to realize that just like systems engineers want to bring all these things together and integrate them, SysML v2 is a language and framework to do that.
Dale Tutt: Yeah and if I may add just one thing to that, I’m sorry, Patty. Todd covered it so well and I completely agree with him. We’ve done it an injustice, calling it v2. It really is a much different approach in the framework and the methodology that’s built into it. And SysML v1, the output is diagrams, and as Todd said, they’re islands. SysML v2, I believe that the outputs are really around architectures, that you’re able to develop a system architecture that you can now use to go design and develop the rest of your product. Architecture is the foundation of every good product and the diagrams are just one early step in the process of doing that.
Dale Tutt: So I think that’s, you know, to me that, the output, the deliverable that you get that’s where I really think it’s the difference. V2 really enables architecture development, and maybe that’s an oversimplification, but I think that’s a way to really help me characterize the differences between the two.
Patty Russo: This talk about systems engineering and now SysML v2 has been great and really important because I think we can all agree that discussions around SysML v2 are necessarily ramping up everywhere. As always, Dale, these are great points and insights from both you, and Todd from you today, as well. But let’s pause here for now. I want to thank our listeners as always for joining us. We hope you are taking away some actionable ideas from these discussions and we’d really love it if you finish out the series with us when we conclude this discussion next time. Until then, I’m Patty Russo and we’ll see you next time on Talking Aerospace Today.
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