CUSTOMER STORY • ENTERPRISE

A First-of-Its-Kind AR and AI Education Platform for Airbus Employees and Customers

THE CHALLENGE

Help Airbus employees share and better

retain company knowledge by designing

a new online training module.

THE RESULT

In 6 months, in partnership with

Singularity University (SU), the team

scoped, designed, engineered, and

tested a prototype of a mixed reality

communications, collaboration, and

learning platform that revolutionized

the way Airbus communicates its

culture and value to internal audiences.

COMPANY: Airbus

FOUNDED: 1970

INDUSTRY: Aeronautics and space

Airbus, the global $67 billion company, has established

a well-deserved reputation as a highly innovative and

successful enterprise at the forefront of the aeronautics

and space industries. Airbus has industry-leading product

and systems engineering and R&D labs that leverage the

latest technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and

virtual reality (VR), also known as mixed reality (XR).

In October 2016, a diverse Airbus team consisting of developers, engineers or “makers,” and leadership development experts travelled from around the world to Singularity University’s Silicon Valley campus to begin an in-depth incubation process focused on exponential theory, vision, and design.

Their goal: Prototype a solution involving exponentially accelerating technologies that addresses a real-world employee training need and delivers corporate business value.

“Like the smartphone before it,

XR is changing the way people

think about applications and what

is possible by a factor of 1000, and

we had to fully switch our minds

over to the possibilities. We were

aware SU had a complementary

understanding to ours of XR as a

disruptive technology, and decided

to partner with them for this project.”

— Alexandre Godin, Leader of Democratization and

Implementation of XR Technologies at Airbus

Airbus already had expertise in mixed media augmented reality, a pioneering technology that changes perceptions of space and data, but knew there was untapped potential. The team believed they could take that technology and apply it to building a compelling learning application—an in-home virtual experience that communicates the Airbus values and spirit of innovation. The team also thought this application could be used as a tool for recruitment.

“Like the smartphone before it, XR is changing the way people think about applications and what is possible by a factor of 1000, and we had to fully switch our minds over to the possibilities. We were aware SU had a complementary understanding to ours of XR as a disruptive technology, and decided to partner with them for this project,” said Alexandre Godin, Leader of Democratization and Implementation of Mixed Reality (XR) Technologies at Airbus.

Six months after the start of this first-of-its-kind partnership, Airbus and SU had ideated, researched, designed, prototyped, and built not only a single augmented reality (AR) learning application for the Airbus workforce; but also a complete learning platform that uses AR and, in its next iterations, AI in a platform that adapts to customize learning to an individual’s goals, ambitions, and learning style. The solution is a new way of delivering corporate education for the gig economy in which people can further their personal objectives while simultaneously supporting the knowledge and skills required by their employers. The new platform serves as an implosion to revolutionize the way Airbus employees and customers collaborate and share information, and will serve as the foundation for the future of learning at Airbus. It may even be extended beyond Airbus employees and customers to benefit the public.

Airbus found the SU experience enlightening, even calling it a time when “magic” happened because of the new thinking, personal growth, and larger, more impactful results that occurred when team members were pushed outside their comfort zones and areas of expertise. SU helped the Airbus team share expectations, review and streamline use cases, explore available system options, and cope with the natural frustrations that arose from the merging of different perspectives of the diverse team members. Airbus plans to use the resulting XR platform to foster exchanges and increase links between teams inside the company as well as with customers. Moving forward, Airbus plans to innovate other new solutions for interconnected and crossover technologies, such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and AI.

To learn more about the SU and Airbus collaboration—and to see compelling videos of this project in action—please see this post from the Airbus Meet the Team blog.

Anatomy of Airbus’ Embedded SU Labs Experience

Singularity University’s team of five designers and two engineers worked in a dedicated

SU Innovation Lab with the Airbus team. SU led Airbus through a transformative process

to discover and implement the long-term vision. The process included research, analogous

findings and advances, theory, and design expertise.

“SU brought uncertainty to our process, which initially was very uncomfortable for us, but really added value in pushing us to improve our solution. Once we accepted it, we were able to better plan with more positive propositions and better, more flexible outcomes for the short and long term. The SU process adapted very well to the technology,” said Alexandre Godin.

SU’s team of experts in exponential technology and Design for Exponential (D4X) methodology and product design teams embedded with Airbus on the SU campus in Silicon Valley and at Airbus’ headquarters in Toulouse, France from November, 2016 to April, 2017.

Step 1: Seeing the Future

The first step in the engagement was to see the future through research. The team reviewed the latest developments and the 10-15 year horizon for XR with Silicon Valley-based domain experts who guided the research and discoveries of analogous advancements—perhaps even in other industries—that could be adapted to the challenge at hand. The team spent time understanding other technologies that would help, like eye-tracking functionality that would indicate comprehension and retention levels, and 3D objects that could be used to ensure more efficient learning and interaction.

Step 2: Designing the Future

The next step was to formulate the bold ideas, to design and create compelling scenarios of what XR applied to the challenge might look like. For this stage, SU used its Science Fiction Design Intelligence methodology to ensure the biggest impact and use cases were created, understood, and agreed upon by everyone on the team. During this time, the Airbus team, which represented diverse departments and perspectives, united in its purpose and learned to trust the process, SU, and each other.

The final application the team chose to develop had to be feasible, economically viable, and capable of generating impact that could easily be described and measured for Airbus management. Whenever possible, it was determined, the team would reuse assets already in existence rather than creating new ones from scratch.

At this stage it became clear that what Airbus was trying to build wasn’t a single training application, but would instead become a transformative digital education platform with its first delivery being the Intro to Airbus training module for employees in its LeaderShip curricula. Working together, the team could state its goal as a single sentence or elevator pitch: “Using XR, we will build an adaptive platform which allows both employees and the company to grow by learning from each other in an engaging and rewarding way.”

NASA Research ParkBuilding 20 S. Akron Rd.Moffett Field, CA 94035-0001 USA+1-650-200-3434

©2017 Singularity University. All rights reserved.

About Singularity University

Singularity University (SU) is a global learning and innovation community using exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges and build an abundant future for all. SU’s collaborative platform empowers individuals and organizations across the globe to learn, connect, and innovate breakthrough solutions using accelerating technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital biology. A certified benefit corporation headquartered at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, SU was founded in 2008 by renowned innovators Ray Kurzweil and Peter H. Diamandis with program funding from leading organizations including Google, Deloitte, and UNICEF. To learn more, visit SU.org, join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @SingularityU, and download the SingularityU Hub mobile app.

SU PROGRAMS

Innovation Partnership Program (IPP)

Design for Exponentials (D4X)

Science Fiction Design Intelligence

SU Labs, Team Incubation

EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Reality (AR)

Mixed Media Augmented Reality (XR)

GLOBAL GRAND CHALLENGE

Learning

SU and Airbus At-a-Glance

Step 3: Building the Future

Building or engineering the future was the third step in the process. At this point, SU helped retro-cast the vision by storyboarding the entire UI and user experience into a blueprint and detailing the design, using wireframes and other tools to spec out the plans for prototyping and building the solution. The SU team embedded with the Airbus team in their Holographic Academy in Toulouse and Paris to finalize the design and build the product working side-by-side with the Airbus AR and XR lab teams.

Step 4: Leap to Become the Future

In the final step, leap, the work centered around planning and then executing how best to apply, integrate, and test the beta solution at Airbus. The new education platform and Intro to Airbus training is in testing now at Airbus to determine how well it improves the experience, learning retention, and peer-to-peer interactions among employees.

“Exponential technologies and innovation are in our

DNA at Airbus. What was radical about SU and its

approach to innovation was teaming across domains

at Airbus and being challenged and inspired to project

farther into the future to define the system we needed

to develop today.”

— Alexandre Godin