A Sampling-Based Method for Robust and Efficient Fault Detection in Industrial Automation Processes

Abstract

In the present work, fault detection in industrial automation processes is investigated. A fault detection method for observable process variables is extended for application cases, where the observations of process variables are noisy. The principle of this method consists in building a probability distribution model and evaluating the likelihood of observations under that model. The probability distribution model is based on a hybrid automaton which takes into account several system modes, i.e. phases with continuous system behaviour. Transitions between the modes are attributed to discrete control events such as on/off signals. The discrete event system composed of system modes and transitions is modeled as a finite state machine. Continuous process behaviour in the particular system modes is modeled with stochastic state space models, which incorporate neural networks. Fault detection is accomplished by evaluation of the underlying probability distribution model with a particle filter. In doing so both the hybrid system model and a linear observation model for noisy observations are taken into account. Experimental results show superior fault detection performance compared to the baseline method for observable process variables. The runtime of the proposed fault detection method has been significantly reduced by parallel implementation on a GPU.