Examining Collins Aerospace’s InteliSence – An eye in the sky for a better passenger experience?

We’re going to take a look today at another Crystal Cabin Awards winner – Collins Aerospace’s InteliSence.

InteliSence is an, integrated intelligence system, which provides cabin crew with deep insights to improve airline operations, cabin service and the passenger experience. It uses AI and predictive information, to help airlines with on-board provision. 

This is pulled together with a sensor suite, and edge-compute video analytics with a deep-learning Artificial Intelligence model applied.                 

Data from glasses, plates, personal electronics and more is collected and communicated to the service team – ensuring drinks are refilled sooner, bedding is made quicker and faulty equipment is remedied rapidly.

 
InteliSence Mockup – note the over-sized camera in this mockup

An example of the sensors in play, is when you go into the suite, and sit – the IFE system wakes up from its sleep mode, thus conserving power.

In the demonstration given, there is a very large camera module. This can be shrunk down, however, Collins Aerospace wanted to emphasise this functionality and visibility. 

Combined with the sensor suite, it starts to put things together, for example, being able to tell when a drink glass is full or empty.

Or adjusting the lighting for if you are reading or not. 

Or how about detecting if a plate is full, or empty? 

As you can see, the camera has picked up there’s an item on the table, its a plate and there’s content on it. And identify when the plate is empty. 

The voluntary service disseminates non-photographic data into a crew’s existing Electronic Flight Bag, achieving unprecedented predictive service information while maintaining passenger privacy expectations, providing hard data about service, how it went and metrics for how it can be improved. 

It also can be deployed to a handheld device to allow for management without the crew needing to leave the galley 

Or being used to identify in Take-Off and Landing Mode:

And beingable to query analytics on what is happening on a flight, what services are popular as well as other metrics.

InteliSence also maintains a view of past passenger preferences for meals, amenities and other comforts, allowing airlines to predict what the customer might want, as well reduce wasteful provisioning.

Privacy will be key 

As you can see from the demonstration module, the camera is massive compared rest of the suite. 

And privacy for something like this is going to be necessary. We know that the collection of metrics is important in improving service, but it can’t come at the cost of privacy – unless a traveller wants to make that trade-off. 

There’s been some movement in the past with this sort of technology as we continue the journey of the “connected cabin”, where sensors gather data to enable crews to provide a better service or be used for a safety-critical purpose.  This focuses on a premium product, to offer a very dedicated service. 

However, I can see lots of uses for the software without cameras, with a sensor package.

It’ll be interesting to see how Collins Aerospace develops this InteliSence concept and brings it to market – as well as the privacy safeguards.

Economy Class and Beyond was a guest of Collins Aerospace at Aircraft Interiors Expo. 

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