Advanced technologies
Simulation
Modelling and Simulation (M&S) is at the heart of engineering at Thales. For more than 50 years, Thales has been at the forefront of providing M&S solutions to adress customer challenges in defence, aerospace and civil markets. Different models, with varying levels of fidelity, are run in simulation environments hosted on powerful computers, to understand operational needs, secure complex designs, explain system behaviour, and predict product performance.
Thales is a key player in the development of Digital Twins; producing reliable and secure simulations containing models that are enhanced and improved by data coming from the real world. We have developed tools that make construction of connected simulations easier. Thales uses explainable artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to analyse the incoming information and increase the capabilities of the simulations to produce a new generation of aids for product test and evaluation, enabling actionable insights into equipment performance for predictive maintenance, enhance the performance of people using complex systems, and create immense value by enabling critical decisions at the point of need.
Our simulation solutions help our customers who want to produce, operate and maintain complex systems of equipment and people in critical environment by reducing the through life cost and time to produce reliable, safe, secure, adaptable and maintainable systems.
© Thales
Key challenges
Real systems are complex, with many interconnected parts from different suppliers, requiring common standards for connection and interchange of simulation components.
© Royal Netherlands Army
Thales plays a key role in international standards organisations and leads activities in the NATO modelling and simulation group (NMSG) pioneering the development of international interoperability standards.
Our early adoption of NATO originated methods like Modelling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS), has enabled us to develop advanced tooling called NUADA™ to link simulations together quickly and easily without needing detailed technical knowledge.
Thales experience in interoperability is shown by the Tactical Indoor Simulator (TACTIS) in the Netherlands which has over 70 interconnected training simulators with cutting edge games technology powered by Unreal Engine 5™, ensuring total user engagement to ensure peak warfighter performance and readiness.
The adoption of Digital Twins requires many different engineering skills including modelling and simulation, cyber security and AI, to ensure the virtual twin accurately reflects the real world with the valuable information it contains being protected against exfiltration.
Thales is a recognised master of these technologies across its entire international footprint. It is the leading industry partner in the United Kingdom Digital Twin Centre (UKDTC), run by the UK government. The centre is pioneering the development of industrial digital twins for customers including government, large and small industries, while growing engineering skills and fostering economic growth within the community.
© Thales
Multi-domain physics simulation and the visualisation of complex information to enable human control and interaction are major challenges.
Our deep research experience in many different operating domains - from the depths of the ocean to the heights of space, enable us to craft reliable multi-physics simulations which better handle the challenges of system design and tradeoffs between thermal, mechanical, chemical and electromagnetic than traditional methods.
Thales’ decades of experience in the mastery of synthetic environment generation and its understanding of the right application of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) enables advanced visualisations for engineering and other purposes, examples include:
- 3D visualisations of drone swarming for advanced concepts development
- Electromagnetic synthetic environments to stimulate radar equipment for testing
- Ultrasonic synthetic environments to stimulate a sonar system with realistic operating environments
All these M&S capabilities enable continuous innovation in the design of our solutions and better preparation of our customers for their operations.
© Alexandre Laoubi/LXM/Thales
