Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is much more than a research field: it is a ubiquitous future technology with the potential to redefine all areas of our society. At Airbus, we believe AI is a key competitive advantage that enables us to capitalise on the value of our data.

Shaping our business through artificial intelligence

Airbus focuses on six technical areas relating to AI that will shape our business over the next five years:

Knowledge extraction: Extracting value from unstructured documents,
Computer vision: Transforming images and video into objects and activities based on deep-learning detection and decision-making,
Anomaly detection: Finding hidden patterns in data,
Conversational assistance: Designing natural language-interaction systems,
Decision-making: Optimising solutions for very complex constrained problems,
Autonomous flight: Enabling the next generation of aerial vehicles with new capabilities.

AI across Airbus

ASTARTES

The Air Superiority Tactical Assistance Real Time Execution System is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) project that aims to digitise the human-level experience to support operators with their tactical coordination tasks in the context of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

Autonomous flight

Leveraging machine learning to enable self-piloted operations

Computer vision and machine-learning technologies based on AI are critical to enabling self-piloted commercial aircraft to take off and land, and to navigate and detect ground obstacles autonomously.

CIMON

This AI-based robotic assistant for astronauts aboard the International Space Station is equipped with cameras, sensors and microphones to see, hear, process and display information, as well as speak and fly.

Earth observation

Imagery provided by advanced aerospace technologies – such as high-resolution satellites and drones within an AI environment – can generate customised analyses for applications relating to catastrophe response and damage assessment.

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Factory of the Future

This DDMS project aims to standardise and streamline software AI tools used for enterprise resource planning to move from sequential to co-developmental production processes.

Future Combat Air System (FCAS)

This European defence programme aims to connect the next-generation fighter aircraft to other aerial vehicles through a system-of-systems approach that is enabled by advanced analytics and AI.

Skywise

Our open-based data platform leverages AI to analyse disparate data sources that offer powerful new insights benefitting the entire aviation industry.

Unmanned traffic solutions for the safe entry of drones and future air taxis into the lower airspace.

Unmanned Traffic Management

Incorporating autonomy into today’s airspace

When sharing our airspace, today’s unmanned aerial vehicles, such as drones, exchange vast amounts of mission-critical information – all of which AI can filter, classify and merge.

Urban Air Mobility

Taking urban transport into the sky

Sense-and-avoid technology, built on AI, leverages mission-critical data to enable self-piloting future air mobility vehicles to predict and react to unforeseen scenarios.

Latest news

Space

31 January 2024

The world’s first metal 3D printer for space is on its way to the ISS

The first metal 3D printer for space, developed by Airbus* for the European Space Agency (ESA), will soon be tested aboard the Columbus module of the International Space Station (ISS). It could be a real game changer for manufacturing in space and future missions to the Moon or Mars.

Space

09 November 2023

Starlab Space Station to boost European Space Agency ambitions in low-Earth orbit

ESA, Airbus and Voyager Space signed a MoU at the ESA Space Summit in Seville, for the Starlab space station in the post-ISS era

Defence

28 March 2023

Airbus achieves in-flight autonomous guidance and control of a drone from a tanker aircraft

Airbus Defence and Space and the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Airbus UpNext, have achieved in-flight autonomous guidance and control of a drone using an A310 MRTT.