Intelligent Automation Corp. Unveils SuperHUMS

Defense Daily, March 6, 2007

By Ann Roosevelt

Intelligent Automation Corp. (IAC) unveiled the SuperHUMS family of products last week featuring a next-generation system on a chip improvement that delivers more than 10 times the performance of previous vibration management systems.

IAC's SuperHUMS is a revolutionary advancement in diagnostic technology for aircraft condition-based maintenance (CBM) applications, company officials said at HELI-EXPO 2007 in Orlando, Fla.

According to IAC CEO Jeff Goodrich, "IAC's SuperHUMS is a technological breakthrough in aviation diagnostics. It's faster, lighter, and better than previous HUMS systems for about the same price."

IAC's successful HUMS record now will give customers supercomputer-like processing speed using all of their existing software and diagnostics, Goodrich said in a statement. "Given the dramatic increase in processing speed, the SuperHUMS is the last HUMS our customers should ever need to purchase."

The SuperHUMS products are based on the highly successful, combat-proven IAC 1209 Modern Signal Processing Unit (MSPU) selected by Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT], Boeing [BA] and the U.S. Army.

Physically, it's a black box and connectors. It's the inside that's different. SuperHUMS patent pending, reconfigurable computing architecture features faster-than-real-time processing using the latest Virtex-4 field programmable gate arrays and XtremeDSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology from Xilinx Corp. [XLNX]. This produces the highest performance machinery diagnostic and monitoring system on the market today, delivering more than 10 times the performance for about the same price as previous generation HUMS.

Bill Lawler, IAC vice president of sales and marketing and company co- founder, told Defense Daily that customers like the Army and Bell Helicopter like SuperHUMS because "as they learn more about the machines they add new algorithms and routines which take more processing power."

While HUMS was fielded only a couple of years ago, it's already getting to the upper limits of its capability, he said. SuperHUMS offers super fast speed, and IAC is the only company in the world doing it.

Faster processing speeds are better, he added. For instance, running and collecting all sorts of data can help in improving safety training allowing replays. HUMS is now enabling the Army to tie trends to actual faults instead of anecdotal evidence, leading to on- condition maintenance. The Army believes in the fidelity of the system. It has written six Air Worthiness releases eliminating a number of inspections, and eight more are pending.

HUMS are in service in the global war on terrorism. "We've never had to send a tech rep to Afghanistan or Iraq...to support the systems, Lawler said. "It works."

IAC has leveraged the growth and availability of commercial-off-the-shelf FPGA software tools, services, and intellectual property cores into an affordable and FAA-certifiable FPGA-based processing system. As with all previous IAC HUMS, the new SuperHUMS product line will allow users to remotely reconfigure their HUMS anywhere in the world.

The SuperHUMS products consists of the IAC 1134 for light helicopters and fixed wing applications, the IAC 1239 for large helicopters, the IAC 1474 for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and the IAC 1249 HUMS / CVR/FDR a combined cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder unit for both fixed and rotary wing applications.

SuperHums has a number of customers including Boeing, which selected it for the CSAR-X program, on hold now until the Air Force decides how to resolve protests to the contract award that were sustained last week by the Government Accountability Office (Defense Daily, Feb. 27).

[Copyright 2006 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]

TICKER(S): Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT]: Boeing [BA]: Xilinx Corp. [XLNX]: