Redwood City‚ Calif. – Nov. 1‚ 2017 – C3.ai announced that it has been selected by Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) to provide the AI and IoT software platform for rapidly delivering a new AI-based predictive maintenance solution for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to increase asset availability and reduce maintenance expenditures‚ thereby enhancing operational value and DoD mission effectiveness. DIUx is a DoD organization focused on accelerating adoption of innovative commercial technologies such as AI for national defense.
After a rigorous evaluation process that proved the maturity and scalability of the C3 Platform‚ the DoD‚ via DIUx‚ has contracted C3.ai for a multi-year agreement to deliver the C3 Predictive Maintenance™ solution for aircraft platforms. The first two platforms will be the E-3 Sentry (AWACS) and the F-16 aircraft‚ and are scheduled to go into production use within six months.
The C3 Platform™ enables the DoD to aggregate and keep current enormous volumes of disparate data‚ including both structured (e.g.‚ sensor reports) and unstructured (e.g.‚ maintenance logs) datasets‚ in a unified cloud-based data image‚ running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud (US)‚ and to employ AI and machine learning at scale‚ in near-real time‚ to predict impending failures at both a component and system level. AWS GovCloud (US) is an isolated AWS region that holds Provisional Authorizations for FedRAMP High and Moderate baselines‚ allowing the DoD to host sensitive Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and all types of regulated workloads.
Proactive and targeted identification of opportunities to service and replace aircraft components will increase deployment certainty‚ reduce the frequency and duration of unscheduled maintenance repairs‚ enable more efficient scheduling of those repairs‚ and increase the productivity of personnel by expediting maintenance operations. The ability to predict equipment failure in the platforms that support men and women in uniform will increase platform availability and directly enhance mission effectiveness.
DIUx serves as a Pentagon hub to attract private-sector innovation‚ such as artificial intelligence‚ to solve large-scale‚ complex technical military challenges.
“The combination of big data‚ elastic cloud computing‚ AI‚ and IoT is becoming the most significant development of the Information Age‚ and is driving the digital transformation of every industry – including aerospace‚ government services‚ and defense‚” said Ed Abbo‚ C3.ai President and CTO. “With DIUx‚ the Department of Defense is demonstrating leadership in moving quickly to integrate these leading-edge technologies into the U.S. military for strategic national security.”
