RHEA Group is leading a new project initiated and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) to broaden the range of stakeholders who can collaborate in the early design stages of space projects implementing model-based system engineering (MBSE). Called ‘State-Of-The-Art User Interaction with a Digital System Model’, this 12-month Technology Development Element (TDE) programme activity will result in an important step towards the use of MBSE tools as a means of design and study for space engineering.
In this project, RHEA will collaborate with Human Design Group, ATG Europe and IRT Saint Exupéry to:
- Identify non-expert users’ needs for interaction with a digital system model during the lifecycle of a space mission
- Exploit state-of-the-art technologies for the most effective interaction with the model
- Develop and validate a prototype of a user interaction environment (UIE) to technology readiness level 3 (TRL3)
- Define a roadmap for implementation of the UIE for model-based reviews at ESA, specifically in a concurrent design environment.
Enabling key stakeholders who are not MBSE experts – for example those from non-technical disciplines such as compliance, risk and finance – to interact with digital models will enable a more integrated, multidisciplinary and concurrent approach during the early design cycles.
Sam Gerené, RHEA Group’s Competence Area Lead for Concurrent Design & MBSE, explains: “Model-based system engineering offers many benefits over a document-centric approach and we believe it will eventually be used for the entire lifecycle of complex engineering projects, across all disciplines and throughout the supply chain. ESA is a global leader in the use of concurrent design – in its case for space system engineering projects, which we are proud to support – and we are pleased to also be working with ESA in its quest to implement MBSE in a comprehensive way in order to make it as effective as possible.”
Press contact: Isabelle Roels
