Emerging Technologies and Commercial Opportunities in Aerospace

The third and final session of the NAE regional meeting held at Duke University took place the morning of Thursday, May 21. As aviation evolves toward increasingly autonomous and integrated systems, the session explored emerging business models and operational frameworks.

The session began with a keynote lecture from John-Paul Clarke, the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Memorial Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Cockrell started his talk by noting how the crew operating a commercial aircraft’s cockpit has dropped from five to two over the decades but has since remained steady. The reason for that stall: The general public still wants a human to make critical decisions during a flight.

But there are still opportunities for introducing more autonomy into the flight process, Clarke noted, anywhere it could be complementary or perhaps even better than humans. Some examples he noted were finding quick backups for flight trajectories and planning, making quick decisions when landing approaches go awry, and spotting the rare occasion when conflicting approvals are given that place people in danger.

“Accidents usually happen when two safe orders are given that interfere with one another,” Clarke said. “Today’s AI systems could quickly recognize these instances and provide 10s of seconds of warning. These are the types of situations where AI could be implemented for short periods of time.”

The second keynote speaker was Ron Epstein, senior equity analyst at Bank of America Merryl Lynch. A Duke graduate himself, Epstein described his job as giving banks advice anytime they want to make investments related to aerospace, whether that be equity transactions, initial public offerings, or upgrading or downgrading a company’s stock valuation.

Through this unique lens, Epstein made the case that the world is entering another golden age of aviation. He noted that over $160 billion of venture capital is now flowing through a wide range of aerospace-related startups. With so many small companies looking to become the next great American success story, and with the rise of AI’s use in computer engineering, today’s most talented and sought-after graduates are often entering the aerospace industry.

“The space industry today is where the internet was in the 1990s; it is essentially going through the dot-com boom and a huge period of innovation,” Epstein said. “There’s a growing realization that hard physical technology that solves a problem has value, and there is a lot of space in the industry for a big new player to emerge.”

The session then moved to two shorter talks given by Jesse Quinlan, a program technologist for NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program, and Miroslav Pajic, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. Quinlan focused on the potentially transformative aviation technologies being pursued at NASA while Pajic talked about the potential security threats posed to control systems and networks by the inclusion of AI and other autonomous systems.

The whole group then came together for a question and answer session moderated by Jerome Lynch, Vinik Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke. The group addressed topics such as the potential for electric airplane startups, the need for regulatory agencies to reassess what constitutes too much risk and new business models that might arise from emerging technologies.

“The people who made the [aviation] rules are long gone, and it is time to rethink the functions that the rules are trying to achieve,” Cockrell said, referring to the incredibly high safety standard every part of an airplane must meet before it is allowed to fly. “We need to rethink the certification process to meet the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.”

After Lynch noted that many other countries are leaping ahead of the United States because they have less regulations, the group discussed potential new business models that could evolve as new technologies come to market. One of the most promising, the group thought, was the prospect of a new regional air mobility network that relies less on the current setup of airport hubs.

“Imagine a network of truly short flights enabled by lower-cost, lower-capacity electronic aircraft,” Epstein said. “The current hub-to-hub setup has its limits. But to ever get to that point, we have to think what an optimal network would look like and also what the policy and financial systems around it would have to look like to make it possible.”