Intelligent Information Systems
M&CT's Intelligent Information Systems unit has the charter to acquire, develop, apply, and transition intelligent systems and advanced information systems technologies to Boeing and its customers. Much of the technology in the intelligent systems area has evolved from the field of artificial intelligence, while the advanced information systems area involves leading-edge research and development in information management and collaborative technologies.
The Intelligent Information Systems organization investigates and provides technology solutions and applications in information management, collaborative technologies, knowledge and information systems, intelligent graphics, adaptive and autonomous systems, data and text mining, and natural language processing. They collaborate with a number of strategic universities and industry research labs to advance and deploy those technologies.
Within Boeing, Intelligent Information Systems supports the 787 program, Commercial Aviation Services, the Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft program, and many military aircraft and space programs. They also provide support to external customers through contract research and development activity. Customers include DARPA, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, Vulcan, Inc., U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories, and other agencies. They also license selected software tools and products to external commercial customers.
Adaptive Systems
The Adaptive Systems group is a cutting-edge research group that focuses primarily on the technologies and disciplines that enable autonomous and intelligent systems:
- Advanced system architectures
- Machine learning
- Data mining
- Software agents and multi-agent systems
- Knowledge management
- Object-oriented software development
- Large-scale systems integration
The group has experience in the following areas:
- Scalable, survivable distributed systems
- Learning systems for intrusion detection
- Robotic control architectures
- Software agent and agent framework development
- Enterprise-wide knowledge management
- Neural network part design retrieval
- Object-oriented software design and development
Knowledge and Information Systems
The Knowledge and Information Systems group leads the development and application of advanced technologies for effective use of technical data in support of Boeing products and services, especially those which depend on accurate information and implicit knowledge of the problem domain. The group's tools and processes result in new methods for data navigation, new digital tools, and increased overall system intelligence. One such tool would enable communication between vehicle diagnostic tools and technical support data -- a detected fault causes the appropriate repair information to be immediately gathered and presented to airplane mechanics.
A long-term goal is to provide information for complex vehicles to support vehicle health management. This information will define how vehicles are designed, built, used, and maintained, and will keep the history of past incidents and performance of the vehicles. With this knowledge, vehicles will be able to reason about their behavior, performance, and state of health. Vehicles might eventually be able to improve their performance or effect repairs.
To support creation of these systems, the Knowledge and Information Systems group is currently developing and deploying technologies in these areas:
- Intelligent graphics and documents, automatic and dynamics drawing generation, and graphic understanding and image analysis (including vector object recognition and raster image processing)
- Integrated components of graphics-based reasoning, graphic summarization, graphic search methods, and computational intelligence
- Specialized technical data delivery processes and systems (e.g., miniaturization, including tailoring data for multiple form factors)
Current applications include the following:
- Intelligent graphics with Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals and Illustrated Parts drawings systems -- providing end users with signal path tracing and simulation, off-sheet references linking, parts information retrieval, dynamically generated wiring diagrams, and schematic animation.
- Synoptic Maintenance Aid for Research and Training-- enabling service engineers to navigate the maintenance and operations graphical data.
- Portable Maintenance Aids -- enabling mechanics to carry all the relevant documentation and information required for a maintenance task on a laptop or Personal Digital Assistant.
Information Management and Collaborative Technologies
The mission of the Information Management and Collaborative Technologies group is to conduct research and lead the development and application of advanced technologies in knowledge management, information management, and collaboration technology in pursuit of Boeing strategic goals.
Technology and application areas:
- Semantics-based technologies, including knowledge representation, ontologies, automated reasoning, and the semantic web
- Distributed and dynamic information integration
- Team collaboration, process modeling, and workflow management
- Multimedia document and content management; meta-data and terminology management
- Distributed information systems and mobile computing
Technical challenges:
- Providing integrated and secure access to multiple, heterogeneous, dynamically changing information sources
- Building knowledge bases and ontologies to support reasoning in applications
- Categorizing, tagging, and searching documents; managing information object lifecycles
- Capturing, modeling, and reusing Boeing's best collaboration practices
- Understanding and managing complex work processes
The Information Management and Collaborative Technologies group has developed the following systems:
- Information Integration Tool Set
- Expertise Locator
- ITAR/EAR Assistant, a tool to identify export-restricted material in text
- Modeling and Simulation Management Systems (MS)2, a tool to capture, analyze, and improve business process models
- Workflow management, solutions that automate various business processes
- TeamSpace, a collaboration environment for managing projects, documents, and meetings
- Display wall, a very large, very high resolution display for collaborating in meetings
- Data and video Conferencing
Data and Text Mining
The Data and Text Mining group investigates and develops advanced techniques for the analysis of large datasets, including methods for structured data as well as text data and documents. Research areas include structured data mining, analysis of time-dependent data, text mining, and natural language processing.
Data and Text Mining uses a combination of commercial tools and Boeing-developed technology to assist customers in analyzing their data, recommend and develop software solutions, and provide training. The group develops methods to meet customers analysis needs and integrates software and the expertise needed to implement solutions.