The Air Force order to the Tidop research group the development of the system.
Gets in 3D the aircraft parts and monitors its elements.
What until not long ago was regarded as fiction in some films today becomes a reality through the hard work of expert research engineers in different areas. Thanks to them, the impossible is becoming possible.
How else, imagine that could be realized that a mechanic who performs maintenance on the Air Force could have a replacement as qualified as him, but without much experience, thanks to a system of augmented reality composed by glasses like Google glass type, connected with a tablet with the size of a smartphone located in the wrist.
It is a virtual system that will assist the mechanic at any time by applying augmented reality technologies that will improve and save costs in the maintenance of the aircraft fleet. In this case the package brakes and landing gear of F18.
The project is called Cyber Assistance System for Military Aircraft Maintenance (Siceman) and since 2013 they are working on it jointly with Industry of Turbo Propellers (ITP) and the research group on Information Technologies for 3D Scanning Complex objects (Tidop) at the University of Salamanca (Usal).
Led by Professor Diego González Aguilera, in the Department of Land and Cartography, this group has been advised of the Logistics Support Command of the Air Force, whose leaders were those who spoke of the “clear need” in aerospace starting a virtual assistance system mechanic.
All this, considering that the Air Force is also suffering cuts in its workforce and there is a need for saving budget as “the cost in the aerospace industry is very high”, as explains González Aguilera.
All these factors are pushing to present a project that won the national competition supported by European funds. The overall budget amounts to 2.5 million euros, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Of this, research is carried half a million, which means hiring four people within a team with ten members.
Due to the complexity of maintaining the F18, the Air Force shows the need for a virtual system that can assist the mechanic technologies based on virtual and augmented reality, as is being done in United States, while trying to improve.
“From the Army invites us to do,” says the head of Tidop who graphically explains the purpose of the project: “Let a mechanical provided with glasses like Google glass type and a CPU that he can carry in a backpack or a belt, even a smartphone or tablet computer, to be able to know what to do, although not expert on aircraft maintenance.”. It is, definitely, that “can be made with this system,” rushing different tasks like changing a brake package, attend to the maintenance of landing gear door or any other laborious task requiring a manual “in many cases difficult to decipher. “
The project has two major milestones. The first is to obtain in 3D the parts and objects of the F18 that will be employed in the maintenance. In total, between the brake package and the landing gear can be around 200 rendered objects in the inside the airbase with the mechanics that disassemble and assemble them. That way, you can take data with photos, different sensors and lasers, for “capture that reality and get these 3D objects,” which are those that will “feed the recognition system and augmented reality.”
This is where the second project milestone occurs, since this system is that “support” the glasses that the mechanic gets when he is monitoring the plane. Once you have told the system to the specific task that has to be made, the glasses will recognize the package brakes or landing gear with the help of the tablet, because that have previously been modeled.
Through this smartphone located in the forearm, the operator can follow through glasses steps that he must take to resolve any problem. All this in a simple way, since this is a system that is not necessary to interpret visual or spatially where and how is that piece. The augmented reality glasses lead the mechanic to it.
According to Diego González Aguilera, all “results in an absolute efficiency in maintenance and training.” In addition, the system shall include voice commands, as the operator, when he is doing his job, usually have his hands busy or stained.
The Siceman project, which began in 2013 and end in 2016, culminating in the realization of a prototype for the Air Force, with the intent to “extrapolate to the fleets of Colombia and Brazil”, as military air within the consortium, these systems “can be very well received.”
Furthermore, it is not ruled out that this new system can be oriented to the market, not only for maintenance and repair of military aircraft, but also of civil and possible applications in the automotive field.
The objectives of this line of research are to use artificially intelligent algorithms to model and study the impact of wolves in the province of Ávila. Using spatial data, statistical Geographical Information System (GIS) approaches and Machine/Deep Learning, we hope to provide a new perspective to the study of wolf activities and attacks on local livestock. 
The advantages of artificially intelligent algorithms are multiple. These algorithms provide a new means of predicting when and where the next attack is most likely to occur. Likewise, additional research may be able to highlight which animals are more likely to be attacked. This data could be of great benefit to local agricultural communities, thus helping protect their assets and help alleviate tension that could better protect the wolf from danger of extinction.
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