In the latest evolution of its nice cabin management system (CMS), Lufthansa Technik (Booth 8730) is showcasing at NBAA 2019 its nicechat voice-recognition system for the CMS, in development at LHT’s Original Equipment Innovation (OEI) branch.
“Many of us have in our homes Alexa or Siri and are getting used to having a certain level of automation using voice recognition,” said OEI product division head Andrew Muirhead. “There’s an expectation from the consumer to use [such apps] in the aircraft.”
The Hamburg, Germany-based company is displaying in a mockup section of a business jet cabin a prototype nine-foot long, voice-commanded ceiling panel with OLED displays that can simulate different decors and appearances. By voice command, it can mimic a stucco ceiling, a mural, or a skylight looking into the heavens, for example.
LHT aims to show attendees nicechat can have powers beyond what home users expect. “We’re not talking about simple things like lights on, lights off,” Muirhead told AIN. “We’re focusing on things that typically take a little more effort, things you have to go into a menu to do,” such as setting room to cinema mode or configuring full-spectrum lighting.
But there is a technical problem confronting onboard voice recognition: the systems rely on the Internet. “Even though many aircraft are connected, if anything goes wrong with the connectivity, it affects the voice-control system,” Muirhead said. “We’re putting our efforts into developing a voice-control system where the library is stored locally on the aircraft, so you don’t have a problem if you don’t have connectivity, or it doesn’t work the way expected.”
Since it works offline, nicechat will need no onboard broadband, and it’s activated by an old-fashioned button rather than voice, to ensure it can’t listen to conversations by unintentional activation—an “important criteria” for passengers on business and VIP aircraft, according to LHT.
Future Aircraft-Passenger Interaction
A launch customer has purchased several voice commands to integrate into the aircraft’s nice system, and LHT engineers are teaching a prototype system how to recognize commands reliably. LHT plans to expand the library over time to cover a wider spectrum of needs and cabin functionality, ultimately rendering “constant adaptation to new apps and user interfaces a thing of the past,” according to the company.
“The idea is, anyone interacting with the cabin management system can make it the way they want it,” Muirhead said. “We’re not talking presets; it’s dynamic configuration of the cabin based on the context of personal preferences, and where the aircraft is at a particular time and place in the journey.”
Nicechat is just one of the system’s new technologies LHT is demonstrating at NBAA.
“We plan to show our thoughts on the future of customer interaction, what the digitized aircraft looks like. 'How do I digitize it to make it mine?'” Muirhead said. “We want the customer to be in control, to select what he or she wants to do, and when.”
That means easy customization for owners and operators, and easy personalization for occasional passengers such as charter customers or onboard guests.
As part of the tech display, LHT is also presenting a “Li-Fi” system demonstrating “how you can stream video over the [cabin] lighting system to a tablet computer,” Muirhead said. “Turn on your reading lights, and the light is getting all the data required [for streaming]. It's modulating the data for the video as part of the transmission of light.”
The nice CMS, able to control cabin systems including video, audio, lighting, environmental, and connectivity, was first installed in 2003, and last year LHT celebrated the sale of its 1,000th unit. LHT’s new fiber optic-based nice Touch system was developed exclusively for Bombardier’s new Global 7500 flagship.
