Tag: ROLLS-ROYCE

Business

Rolls-Royce keen to partner the Indian Navy’s electrification journey for its ‘Fleet of the Future’

Oct 20, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #ROLLS-ROYCE

As part of the UK’s upcoming Carrier Strike Group tour, Rolls-Royce is all set to showcase to Indian Navy customers its capabilities to design, build and deliver customised power and propulsion solutions for India’s naval modernisation requirements. The company also expressed its keenness to explore opportunities for partnering the Navy with end-to-end solutions for electrification of India’s future warships.

Speaking about the upcoming tour, Kishore Jayaraman, President – India and South Asia, Rolls-Royce said, “As India envisions the fleet of the future, our commitment to support the country’s defence modernisation and self-reliance goals remains as strong as ever. The Carrier Strike Group tour is a significant opportunity for Rolls-Royce to showcase the results of decades of innovation in naval power and propulsion. Our experience of supporting the electrification of the Royal Navy’s warships over many years is of particular significance, including the design and deployment of the world’s first hybrid-electric naval system. We believe that we can bring great learnings and value to any future programme envisioned by the Indian Navy for developing electric warships.”

Rolls-Royce is the only manufacturer in the world that has provided navalised marine gas turbine generators into front-line integrated full electric propulsion (IFEP) powered destroyers and aircraft carriers. Being a key member of the Power and Propulsion Sub-Alliance, Rolls-Royce was responsible for the design, procurement, manufacture, integration, test and delivery of the Queen Elizabeth Carrier ships’ power and propulsion system, which includes the mighty MT30 marine gas turbine and a low voltage electrical distribution system.

Abhishek Singh, Senior Vice President – Defence, India and South East Asia, Rolls-Royce said, “The HMS Queen Elizabeth visiting India is one of the finest examples of technological excellence in naval warfare. We are looking forward to familiarising our Indian customers with Rolls-Royce’s capabilities aboard this majestic warship and to explore areas for collaboration to further strengthen the might and range of the Indian Navy.”

Richard Partridge, Chief of Naval Systems, Rolls-Royce added, “Rolls-Royce is well-positioned to partner India for the modernisation of its naval fleet with the right mix of products, experience and capabilities to design, build, deliver and support customised naval systems and solutions. Our technologically superior offerings and expertise provide the ideal solutions for developing integrated hybrid-electric and full-electric propulsion for naval vessels, including the integration of the MT30 that brings the most power dense gas turbine to these next generation warships.”

What’s on-board the mighty Queen Elizabeth Class carriers

The Royal Navy’s new Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) aircraft carriers operate an IFEP system that is one of the most advanced propulsion systems offering increased power, flexibility and reliability – best suited for large warships. It provides two MT30 marine gas turbine alternators per ship, rated at 36MW, with the power to propel these vessels beyond 25knots. The MT30 alone delivers huge design benefits through its power density, significantly reducing the number of gas turbines required to power advanced naval platforms. The MT30 also guarantees its power throughout the 50-year service life expectancy of the ship. The QEC also feature a complete Rolls-Royce low voltage (LV) electrical distribution system that distributes enough electricity to power the equivalent of 5,000 family homes.

As electrical power system integrators, Rolls-Royce provides solutions for both hybrid and all-electric naval vessels, optimising performance to satisfy electrical load demands of the future such as advanced sensor, propulsion and combat systems. It is also an experienced provider of low voltage (LV) electrical power distribution systems for a range of warship and submarine applications.

With over 80 years of naval propulsion experience, Rolls-Royce has pioneered some of the most important technical advances in marine propulsion including the use of aero gas turbines for surface ship propulsion. The company offers a world-leading portfolio of marine products and systems ranging from gas turbines and diesel engines, propulsion, electrical & automation systems, deck handling and innovative unmanned technologies as well as comprehensive customer support for present and future fleets.

Business World

Rolls-Royce Launches Pathway to Power Net Zero Economy

Jun 17, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #ROLLS-ROYCE

Accelerating the race to a zero carbon economy

We are today setting out our near-term actions to achieve net zero by 2050 at the latest. Our pathway shows how we will focus our technological capabilities to play a leading role in enabling significant elements of the global economy to get to net zero carbon by 2050, including aviation, shipping, and power generation. This includes the development of new technologies, enabling an accelerated take-up of sustainable fuels and driving step-change improvements in efficiency. One year on from joining the UN Race to Zero campaign, we are announcing plans to make all our new products compatible with net zero by 2030, and all our products in operation compatible by 2050. These products power some of the most carbon intensive parts of the economy. We are also introducing short-term targets – linked to executive remuneration – to accelerate the take-up of sustainable fuels, which have a key role to play in the decarbonisation of some of our markets, especially long-haul aviation. We are already well advanced with net zero and zero carbon technologies across our Power Systems portfolio and as a result have sufficiently reliable data to be able to define a science-based interim target to reduce by 35% the lifetime emissions of new products sold by the business by 2030.

Driving system change to meet Paris Agreement climate goals

There is no single solution to net zero and so we are innovating across multiple areas simultaneously. However, the pace and prioritisation of technological solutions, as well as global consistency and collaboration in policy, will also be key to success. Consequently, we are expanding our collaboration with partners, industry leaders and governments across the three critical systems in which we operate – transport, energy and the built environment – to accelerate progress. These hard to abate sectors are all identified by the UN Race to Zero as requiring technological breakthroughs in order to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals and limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “At Rolls-Royce, we believe in the positive, transforming potential of technology. We pioneer power that is central to the successful functioning of the modern world. To combat the climate crisis, that power must be made compatible with net zero carbon emissions. This is a societal imperative as well as one of the greatest commercial and technological opportunities of our time. Our products and services are used in aviation, shipping and energy generation, where demand for power is increasing as the world’s population grows, becomes increasingly urbanised, more affluent

and requires more electricity. These sectors are also among those where achieving net zero carbon is hardest. As a result, our innovative technology has a fundamental role to play in enabling and even accelerating, the overall global transition to a net zero carbon future. We believe that as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and looks to build back better, global economic growth can be compatible with a net zero carbon future and that Rolls-Royce can help make that happen.”

Nigel Topping, UN High Level Champion for COP26, added: “Winning the race to a zero emission economy by 2050 at the latest requires radical collaboration and technology breakthroughs across energy, transport and the built environment – critical parts of the economy that are also among the hardest to decarbonise. By organising its industrial technology capabilities to deliver the system change society needs, Rolls-Royce is putting itself at the forefront of the defining economic opportunity of our time; one that customers want to buy, investors want to back, and the brightest talent want to apply their skills to.”

Pioneering the innovations that can enable the transition

We have many years of experience in pioneering solutions to some of society’s toughest technological challenges and, increasingly, we have focused that effort on the creation of sustainable power. We already make the world’s most efficient large civil aero-engine in service today, the Trent XWB, and its successor, UltraFan®, will be 25% more efficient than first generation Trent engines, significantly improving the economics of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). In addition, we have built a microgrid business and designed a small modular reactor (SMR) power plant with the potential to transform how we power cities or industrial processes. We are investing in battery storage technology, demonstrating fuel cells and building a leading position in all-electric and hybrid-electric flight. Next month our Spirit of Innovation all-electric plane will take to the sky as it prepares to break the world all-electric flight speed record. Collectively and individually, these technologies represent the extensive expertise Rolls-Royce has to enable a net zero world.

Pivoting our R&D investment to lower and net zero carbon solutions

In line with the commitments we have made under the UN Race to Zero campaign, we are aligning our business model to the Paris Climate Agreement goals and setting out the pathway that will take us to net zero. We are already boosting our research and development (R&D) expenditure to pivot towards lower and net zero carbon technologies, moving from approximately 50% of our gross R&D spend today to at least 75% by 2025.

Our decarbonisation strategy

Our strategy has three interconnected pillars:

  1. Decarbonising our operations: We will eliminate emissions from our own operations (scope 1 & 2) by 2030*. Some facilities will achieve this target sooner, such as our production site at Bristol, UK, which is set to be the first Rolls-Royce facility to achieve net zero carbon status, in 2022.
  2. Decarbonising complex, critical systems by enabling our products to be used in a way that is compatible with net zero and pioneering new breakthrough technologies that can accelerate the global transition to net zero. A wholesale transformation of the systems that make up the backbone of our global economy is required to achieve net zero and we can help accelerate that transition firstly by further advancing the efficiency of our engine portfolio through next generation technologies, to improve the economics of sustainable fuels; and secondly by introducing new low or zero emission products, including fuel cells, microgrids, hybrid-electric and all-electric technologies. To help accelerate the take-up of SAFs, we will make all our civil aero-engines in production compatible with 100% SAF, through testing, by 2023. This means two thirds** of our current fleet of Trent large jet engines and three fifths of our business jet engines will be SAF-ready within three years and aligns with the UN Race to Zero breakthrough goal of 10% of all the fuel used in aviation being SAF by 2030. The current generation of SAFs reduce lifecycle carbon emissions by up 70% but this is assumed to increase to 100% as production pathways for synthetically derived fuels mature. We will work with our customers in the armed forces to achieve the same goal for the Rolls-Royce engines they use and, as the use of SAFs increases, we will ensure that our future combat systems are compatible with net zero carbon. By 2023, we also intend to certify for use with sustainable fuels, the new generation of our mtu Series 2000 and Series 4000 engines. These represent the majority of the reciprocating engines we manufacture and are used across a range of applications from power generation to rail and shipping. Achieving all our 2023 targets now forms part of our executive remuneration policy.
  3. Actively advocating for the necessary enabling environment and policy support to achieve this ambition.

Among our technological innovations:

  • In all-electric aviation, we are moving from demonstrators to commercial deals, such as with the UK’s Vertical Aerospace in the urban air mobility market, and with Italian airframer Tecnam and Norwegian airline Wideroe in the all-electric commuter aircraft. We are also currently testing the most powerful hybrid-electric propulsion system in aerospace and continuing to progress with our UltraFan aero engine, which will be 25% more efficient than the first generation Trent engines and improve the economics of SAFs. We are already exploring the use of SAFs in defence applications, including as part of our involvement in the Tempest programme in the UK.
  • We are advancing and selling microgrids, complete with our own battery storage solutions, to help expand the use of renewable energy across remote communities and our energy-intensive digital economy. We are also exploring additional functionality through the introduction of fuel cells to provide clean power for industrial vehicles and processes.
  • We are testing hydrogen fuel cell modules at our Power Systems facility in Germany and plan to have integrated 2MW of hydrogen fuel cells into operational microgrid demonstrators by 2023.
  • Our SMR consortium is set to make a significant contribution to net zero through its innovative approach to power generation, providing a generational change in the cost of nuclear energy. At 470MW, each SMR could help decarbonise a city of a million homes. With UK Government assistance and third party investment, the programme is now entering a new phase leading to design approval and power on the grid at the end of the decade.

Pioneering sustainable, net zero power sits at the heart of our strategy, future innovation and growth agenda. Our decarbonisation strategy will ensure that Rolls-Royce is not only compatible with, but actively enabling, a net zero future.

For an executive summary of our net zero report visit https://www.rolls-royce.com/~/media/Files/R/Rolls-Royce/documents/others/rr-net-zero-exec-summary.pdf, and for the full pathway including the steps we are taking to lead the transition to net zero carbon visit https://www.rolls-royce.com/~/media/Files/R/Rolls-Royce/documents/others/rr-net-zero-full-report.pdf. We are committed to playing our part in the global journey to net zero. Undoubtedly, the very nature of this transition will mean that there may be general and sector specific circumstances which will influence the output from our roadmap. These are set out on page 32 of the full report. We also recognise that we must be prepared and able to adjust our decarbonisation ambitions in the context of the changing landscape.

Business World

Digital Culture Courses Top Rolls-Royce Free Training As Subscribers Hit 30,000

Jan 23, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Head of the Digital Academy, #Manisha Mistry, #R2 Data Labs, #ROLLS-ROYCE

Demand for skills that help build a digital culture lead the rankings of Rolls-Royce’s free-to-access digital training campaign, Helping You Prepare, which has just reached 30,000 subscribers.

Learning how to visualise data, and training as an agile coach rank above more technical courses in the suite, which has reached users from 161 different countries since it was launched in May 2020 as part of Rolls-Royce’s response to COVID-19. All courses are available on www.rolls-royce.com for anyone to improve their skills ready for a more digital world post-pandemic.

The top subscribed courses are Basics of Power BI, a data visualisation programme (14,000); and Introduction to the Internet of Things (8,000). Geographically the campaign has been most popular in India (40%) and the US (28%). Almost all subscribers are under the age of 37.

Manisha Mistry, Head of the Digital Academy, R2 Data Labs, which runs the Helping You Prepare course content, said: “The demand for digital skills is huge as people spend more time at home and start to adjust to the digital changes that are accelerating around us as a result of the pandemic’s impact.

“Rather than seeing a pull towards deep technical training, we’re seeing particular interest in courses that help make sense of data insights and bring people together around the stories that data gives organisations; which points to persuasion, discussion and digital culture, which is vital to engaging across organisations with people who are not always going to be deep data specialists.”

The full list of top courses:

1.     Basics of Power BI (over 14k enrolled) | Median Learner Age: 32

2.     Introduction to IoT (over 8k enrolled) | Median Learner Age: 25

3.     Agile Mindset (over 3k enrolled) | Median Learner Age: 34

4.     The Power of Data (over 2k enrolled) | Median Learner Age: 31

5.     Data Privacy Awareness (over 1k enrolled) | Median Learner Age: 30

The top five countries our learners are accessing our content in (from 161 territories):

1.     India – 40%

2.     US – 28%

3.     UK – 12%

4.     Indonesia – 11%

5.     Canada – 9%

Business World

Rolls-Royce Publishes Pioneering Bias-Control AI Ethics Toolkit

Dec 15, 2020 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences sector at UNESCO, #Caroline Gorski, #Gabriela Ramos, #Group Director of R2 Data Labs, #ROLLS-ROYCE

RR LogoRolls-Royce has released its breakthrough work on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and trustworthiness to help support the future health, wealth and growth of the world.

The comprehensive ethical framework and trustworthiness process is free to download from the Rolls-Royce website. Once fully implemented, businesses that follow the checks and balances within it can assure themselves that their AI projects are fair, trustworthy and ethical.

We have called this toolkit The Aletheia FrameworkTM, after the Greek goddess of trust and disclosure, and believe it will help address one of the biggest barriers to the widespread use of AI – mistrust.

Warren East, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce, who announced the breakthrough in September, said: “I hope today’s publication will become a watershed moment for artificial intelligence. As we move rapidly to a more digital world, people have a right to expect that AI is used ethically and that it is a trustworthy partner for people and society.

“The Aletheia FrameworkTM provides the foundations for that to happen, so business leaders, academics, technologists and even philosophers can now move from simply talking about the potential of AI, to unlocking its benefits for the health, wealth and growth of the world.

“It’s with that objective in mind that Rolls-Royce has decided we need to make this free for anyone to access and we will seek to build partnerships with interested organisations to support its widespread application, so that we can all build trust in AI.”

The Aletheia Framework™ is a checklist that invites organisations to consider the impacts of using artificial intelligence prior to deciding whether to proceed. It looks across a total of 32 facets of societal impact, governance and trust, and transparency and requires executives and boards to provide evidence that these have been rigorously considered.

Once the AI has been applied, the framework includes a five-step continuous automated checking process, which, if comprehensively applied, tracks the decisions the AI is making to detect bias or malfunction and allow human intervention to control and correct it.

Caroline Gorski, Group Director of R2 Data Labs, the data innovation team for Rolls-Royce, said: “Rolls-Royce is a global industrial technology leader and has used artificial intelligence for decades to analyse more than 70 trillion data points across 26 dimensions on our jet engines so we can increase the amount of time they fly and improve their sustainability.

“We’re now developing AI for quality inspections of critical components and it’s in the justification of applying artificial intelligence technologies to this activity that we have had to challenge ourselves to ensure it’s the right thing to do, and that it’s trustworthy.

“It’s that deep safety culture at the heart of our business that has created the mindset to apply safety principles to data. We can’t wait to share The Aletheia FrameworkTM with everyone and collaborate on the benefits to our world that we believe it will bring.”

With a potentially significant contribution to make in the global conversation on AI, The Aletheia FrameworkTM has been shared with experts from UNESCO, which is undertaking a global consultation on AI ethics.

Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences sector at UNESCO said: “In an initial exchange, The Aletheia FrameworkTM has been shared with UNESCO, which has been working with experts from around the world to develop recommendations for human-centred AI.”

“AI will radically change our world, but it is ethics that will shape how it looks. All stakeholders, whether public or private, must work on this together.”

The Aletheia FrameworkTM has been extensively reviewed and it was during that process its potential was revealed.

Lee Glazier, Head of Service Integrity, Rolls-Royce, who led the assurance work around the use of data and built the framework, said: “During the peer review process of our work with experts in big tech, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, academia and government, it became clear that no other organisation had progressed as far as we had. It was also clear that the applications for what is now The Aletheia FrameworkTM went beyond our own area of industrial use and into consumer applications, healthcare, recruitment, security – basically any use of artificial intelligence.”

The open-access publication of The Aletheia FrameworkTM is also intended to invite critique and collaboration from the global AI community to seek improvements. The decision to publish it follows a recent breakthrough in speech software for people living with motor-neurone disease (MND), motivated by a Rolls-Royce colleague who had personal experience with the disease.

The software improves the quality of life of people living with MND who cannot speak, by using AI to learn their voice, idioms, emotional inflections and phrases, so they can interact quickly with those around them. The experience of developing this software was among the AI activities that fed into the development of The Aletheia FrameworkTM.

Business World

Rolls-Royce Announces breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Trustworthiness

Sep 2, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #AI ethics framework, #Caroline Gorski, #Global Director, #ROLLS-ROYCE, #Tech Week’s AI Summit

Rolls-Royce has announced two breakthroughs in artificial intelligence ethics, which could help gain society’s trust of the technology and accelerate the next generation of industrialisation, known as industry 5.0.

The first breakthrough is an AI ethics framework, which is a method that any organisation can use to ensure the decisions it takes to use AI in critical and non-critical applications are ethical. This is the first time AI ethics for industrial contexts has moved beyond theory and into practical application.

Secondly, within that framework, is the first step-by-step process for ensuring the outcomes of AI algorithms can be trusted. This five-layer checking system focuses on the outputs of algorithms, not the algorithms themselves, which are constantly changing. The checking system prevents biases from developing in algorithms undetected and with results being constantly monitored, it ensures they are trustworthy.

The ethics framework and its trust process have been peer reviewed by subject matter experts in several big tech firms, as well as experts in the automotive, pharmaceutical, academic and government sectors. Both will be published in full under Creative Commons licence later this year on the Rolls-Royce.com website.

In a keynote speech at London Tech Week’s AI Summit, Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Officer, Warren East, said: “By publishing our findings we want to move the AI ethics conversation forwards from discussing concepts and guidelines, to accelerating the process of applying it ethically.

“There is no practical reason why trust in AI cannot be created now. And it’s only with the acceptance and permission of our society – based on that trust – that the full benefits of AI can be realised, and it can take its place as a partner in our lives and work. 

“As a business we are open to collaborative innovation and we will continue to talk to key stakeholders, customers, counterparts and technology leaders to share our work in detail to see how we can help each other progress for the greater growth, wealth and health of our world.”

Rolls-Royce is one of the world’s leading industrial technology companies and we have been applying advanced analytics for more than 30 years, and using artificial intelligence to disrupt the market with our real-time engine health monitoring service since 1999.

These latest breakthroughs have been achieved as a part of our work to apply AI throughout our business, including the use of robotic inspections on critical components. The AI development work is spearheaded by our data innovation business, R2 Data Labs.

Caroline Gorski, Global Director of R2 Data Labs, said: “Rolls-Royce’s AI capabilities are embedded deeply into other companies’ products and services and so aren’t widely known. Rolls-Royce’s AI doesn’t often feature in a consumers’ understanding of how the digital world is changing their lives.

“The current debate about the use of AI is focused on the consumer and the treatment of consumer and personal data. But we believe that what we have created – by dealing with a challenge rooted squarely in the industrial application of AI – will help not only with the application of AI in other industries but far more widely.”

The two breakthroughs were made during work around an internal assurance challenge where robotic inspections were proposed for the inspections of critical components. During the peer review process, it became apparent that both the ethical framework around that decision making, as well as the trustworthiness process, were new and had the potential to be applied across all uses of artificial intelligence.

Caroline Gorski, said: “There is much more still to do. We haven’t solved all of AI’s challenges but we hope that when we make this work freely available, it can help organisations large and small around the world grow using AI for good, ethical outcomes.”