Arcfield’s Intelligent MBSE slashes engineering time with AI-powered modeling

By JONATHAN STINSON

Assistant editor jonathan.stinson@theredstonerocket.com

Think about a nuclear submarine cruising the ocean depths and all of the systems that had to be designed just to make that possible.

Think of documentation that was needed to tell shipbuilders how to build it, sailors how to operate it, and mechanics how to fix it.

Digitizing, compiling and creating models based on those specifications can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

“Typically, when you put hands on keyboard and you’re creating the digital models, it requires – we measured it, believe it or not – between 1.2 and 3.8 hours per requirement,” Kevin Kelly, chairman and CEO of Arcfield said.

Now, Kelly says, there is a way to do that faster.

In April, Strategic Technology Consulting, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arcfield, announced a new product called Intelligent MBSE.

It’s designed to take traditional textbased information and convert it into digital models and design artifacts.

“With intelligent MBSE, we’re able to feed the documentation in paper form – and in some cases, with spoken text – query the model and create modifications and have autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, create the code that represents the digital model automatically.

Model-based system engineering isn’t new, but with the quick adoption of artificial intelligence, the speed at which the processes involved can take place is. Kelly said they’ve reduced the time it takes per requirement down to minutes.

“Speed and consistency at the highest level are the biggest advantages,” Kevin Kelly, chairman and CEO of Arcfield, said. “It serves as a force multiplier and gives us the ability to analyze as-built and legacy systems and create digital models in an automated fashion, which in some cases, reduces the likelihood of human error as it’s introduced and improves consistency across the digital models given they are created using the same algorithms.”

Kelly said the company invested a few million into developing its Intelligent MBSE.

According to documentation on Intelligent MBSE on the company’s website, that effort began in 2023.

The new system can be built into existing MBSE tooling. The company says it can integrate with Cameo Systems Modeler and Syndeia. It also provides a tool agnostic, SysML V2-ready web interface.

The company also says Intelligent MBSE allows users to “extract semantically accurate system requirements from legacy documents; generate SysML architectures from legacy documents; trace architecture elements to requirements; provide SysML model understanding and analysis; and, automate artifact creations in SysML tools and digital engineering repositories.”

Representatives from Arcfield will be at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium and plan to host a reception on Tuesday night that will feature a cigar roller and a bourbon giveaway.