Using cognitive automation for aircraft general systems management

A today´s trend within the aircraft industry is towards a so-called More Electric Aircraft (MEA) architecture, using electric power as single type of energy to supply most of the systems on board of an air vehicle. Besides the various advantages, e.g. improved efficiency, reduced operating costs, etc., this will increase the complexity of the electrical system and therefore have an impact on the related Control and Monitoring System. Making use of new opportunities such as an efficient power management will even further increase the complexity of system management. Additional requirements regarding decision making and communication arise when used on board of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). The concept of cognitive automation and the Cognitive System Architecture developed on the Munich University of the Armed Forces (UBM) is well suited to address many of these challenges. In this paper we investigate the application of Cognitive Automation for an advanced power management within a MEA architecture. After the system related aspects of the new MEA architecture are presented, the theory of Cognitive Automation is briefly introduced. The method to achieve a centralised knowledge representation for the General Systems domain is presented and two different approaches to planning within this framework are discussed. Both approaches were implemented and verified using a simulation model of the general systems.