Rolls-Royce CTO Interview: How jet engines of the future will run on electricity and city taxis will fly

Sitting halfway across the world he can still control the fridge in his home, turn the boiler on and off, or just open the door for his guest, through systems built by him! As Chief Technology Officer at Rolls-Royce, Paul Stein is at the forefront of several technology innovations. So it is no surprise that he casually mentions 'flying cars' as a viable alternative for public transport in the near future for planet earth.

After all, Rolls-Royce is leading the pack in outselling its peers in innovation in aerospace technologies. The company's latest product – 'UltraFan' – is by far the most advanced gas turbine for aircrafts built in the world. Moneycontrol's Durba Ghosh, had an exclusive chat with Rolls-Royce CTO Paul Stein to know more about innovations that can potentially mirror a sci-fi movie. Excerpts from a candid conversation:

Q. Rolls-Royce has broadened its purview to innovate with emerging technologies from just being a mechanical engineering company. How will you prepare the company for future growth?

A. We have gone all out to embrace rapid technology changes, with special focus on digitisation and electrification.

Our partnership with Tata Consultancy Services harbours these very tenets. We have set up a research capability called R2 data labs, which was recently launched. Here we are working on new tech innovations such as AI and data visualisation.

The TCS platform will provide a robust base for data visualisation so that we have a firm cyber protected, cloud-based platform to start rapid innovation.

AI, in particular, has several business cases for industrial-level ventures.

It can be used to stitch together design, manufacturing, and supply chain capabilities. In each of these areas we see a sea of change happening in terms of improving digital technology.

We have already started to use some examples of AI to look for solutions to problems that were too big to handle earlier. In manufacturing, the main thrust is to digitise supply chain management.

Then we can use blockchain to interact with supply chain, but we are not really there as yet.

Then there is IoT for factory environment to create new visualisation methods, such that we see before we built it.

That is a technique we have been using quite extensively.

In services, most prominently in aviation, we are monitoring products as they are being used through these technologies, creating huge pool of data for analysis to see where service intervention is needed.

Q. Rolls-Royce has particularly been a winner in the aerospace technology. Can you throw light on innovations related to aviation?

A. We are proud of our product family in aerospace, which essentially makes large civil aviation products such as engines powering wide-body jets. We are outselling our competitors in this space.

We have got to this position through continuous application of technologies. In fact, we have 14 identified categories. It’s to make sure we spend wisely across areas of design, new materials, exploring new geometries for turbines, and so on.

The whole spectrum of things is very complex. But beyond current family of engines, we have a very exciting new engine architecture called UltraFan. It will now be the next leap in performance in gas turbine technology.

We are in the process of testing major functions of UltraFan now. It’s the single big shift in engine architecture since the RB211 of 1970s.

We are hoping it to power airlines somewhere in 2025 and beyond. Beyond that we are now seeing for the first time electrification starting to impact aviation.

Beyond aviation, we are also excited about marine. We are working on ship intelligence leading to a time when we can remotely man ships using AI and situational awareness.

Some innovations in nuclear is leading us to more modular power stations, designed to reduce the cost of zero carbon electricity. It is competitive with wind. In power systems business we are working on micro grids, which is a smart way to connect generators to meet energy demands at a granular level compared to big power stations.

The whole world of telematics that has changes automotive industry can be paralleled into aviation. We are using telematics to obtain data for flight scheduling, manage fuel, all the things that are parallel to automotive.

On top of that we are electrifying. Electrification of civil aviation is impacting a whole new area called personal mobility.

A flying taxi, for instance, that can carry passengers 20 kilometres across the city center.

A new type of regional craft is also being conceived on the back of hybrid electrification to create an alternate mass transportation system. Another type of electrification being used is for long-haul aircrafts. It uses electrification to change the airflow around the aircraft to improve fuel use.

Q. AR/VR technology has been around for long but hasn’t made a mass impact as yet. Do you see any use case for it in solving real-world problems?

A. It’s fair to say that VR and AR have very limited applications as of now. Apart from gaming, there’s not much to talk about. I personally feel there are very good applications that we haven’t looked at as yet.

For example, our marine division is using VR for training crews who have to handle ships at sea in a difficult environment.

We have used AR for manufacturing, for assembling a complex component that we are developing, where we want to make sure we will be able to assemble it in the right order.

We use VR environment to let a manufacturing engineer pretend to be in a real-time environment to assemble parts in order to make sure we do it right. But, these are fairly isolated examples.

I would lay a challenge to the AR/VR community for this to be less of technology chasing application, and more of applications chasing tech so that it engages more with real world challenges. IoT, on the other hand, is totally different.

It’s growing rapidly and is finding application in various functions – deducing the state of parts, history of parts, directly communicating with the machines, and so on. We are hungry for this technology because we can conceive lots and lots of applications that can save us a lot of money. With IoT it is applications chasing technology.

Q. How are you leveraging resources in India to drive innovation?

A. We are leveraging a lot of resources in India. We have centres all over India, and the biggest concentration is in Bangalore with 600 design engineers and digital team as well. We have manufacturing capabilities, catering to the globe from here.

Now we are saying how we can build up activity in India.

If we want to sell in India, how we can create a closed ecosystem so that we can work with the Indian government on developing indigenous defence capability using a team here made of domestic talent, to design new things that India can make and export. But it needs to move quickly because other countries are talking on the same lines.

Q. Why do you think India lags behind in technology innovation?

A. Government of India has done a fantastic job in terms of policies. But the pace is not fast enough and not enough. We have proven to the world that we can make quality components for the world, in India.

We have done very well on exports and we have a big supply chain here.

But the market needs to come up with big programs or big orders for companies to contribute. Also, big programs need to have co-creation opportunities. This country must leverage skills and talent available here to create an innovate products for the globe.

It will be extremely critical in the next five years. All along we have said let’s design elsewhere and then manufacture in India, increasing blue collar jobs.

But a more sustainable and scalable way will be to have our own IPs. We have to start creating those IPs.

India has got a rapidly evolving ecosystem of small, medium, large, and very large companies in digital space who are able to manage digital knowledge. Companies like TCS have a world-class platform that can help in data visualisation.

When I think of Indian universities, however, I don’t know if any ranks in the top institutions for emerging tech education. In Singapore, for example, we work closely with Nanyang Technological University, which is now number 11 in world ranking.

China is also investing heavily on AI, while most of the top 10 are US universities. In this scenario, if India wants to leap frog in the digital space from simply being a platform provider to be a leader in tech innovation, it will need a strong science base to create that capability.

It is all about graduating to the next level. Skilling is key to reach that next level. India has a fantastic talent pool, so it is now about how national science is funded. It’s true for any technology.

Q. How do you think India can be in the leadership position of tech innovation?

A. By pulling together a coherent ecosystem! I would want to compare India with Singapore here. Why are they so successful, why are we there?

Singapore has managed to join their systems through research, govt grants, planning mission for new buildings, attractive system of bringing foreign people into the companies, no trade barriers, or bureaucracy in the way business is done, available finance, and a big customer base which is within the country. They pull it together and present it as a package.

It accelerates what we can do there and what it can do for itself. UK has a world-class science base but has been suffering for many years because it has not been able to pull through that science into actual products. India needs to model itself on such examples and be more agile.

India has a lot to offer but it got to learn that companies do not have infinite patience and the world is moving very quickly. Companies that are looking to set up world-class centres, if things are taking too long, competition will take over and the benefit will go someplace else. India has a golden opportunity, every other country gives India the first right of refusal. India produces half a million STEM graduates a year. It’s a starting point. But, it is a case of agility and a system that puts pace above bureaucracy.

durba.ghosh@nw18.com