The Aerospace ID Technologies Research Programme has been launched by UK-based Cambridge Auto ID Lab, in co-operation with six organisations, including Airbus and Boeing, to overcome obstacles to the use of automated identification technologies.
The programme could lead to aircraft with many radio-frequency identification devices (RFID) on board that are activated once a maintenance hangar is entered. RFID technology uses a microchip that stores data and transmits information when the chip is powered by a signal it receives from a reader. The technology could be used for component tracking and part condition monitoring. RFID readers in the hangar would remotely interrogate the devices on incoming aircraft and update a database.
“The remote data-reading maintenance hangar also requires computer databases that would be updated by the remote interrogation,” says the programme’s research director, Duncan McFarlane. “This issue of maintenance synchronisation is important and is of interest to our partner Boeing,” he says.
Source: Flight International
