From monitoring data to remaining useful life : an evolving approach including uncertainty.

International audienceAlthough prognostic activity is nowadays recognized as a key feature in maintenance strategies, real prognostic systems are scarce in industry. That can be explained from different aspects, one of them being the lack of knowledge on the monitored system that impedes the development of classical dependability analysis (based on statistical data for example). Within this frame, the general purpose of the work is to propose a prognostic system that starts from monitoring data and goes through provisional reliability and remaining useful life by characterizing the uncertainty following from the degradation process. More precisely, the paper emphasizes on the development of an evolving neuro-fuzzy predictor that, not only "gives" an approximation of the degradation of an equipment but also associates to it a confidence measure

Impact of noise on a dynamical system: prediction and uncertainties from a swarm-optimized neural network

In this study, an artificial neural network (ANN) based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) was developed for the time series prediction. The hybrid ANN+PSO algorithm was applied on Mackey--Glass chaotic time series in the short-term $x(t+6)$. The performance prediction was evaluated and compared with another studies available in the literature. Also, we presented properties of the dynamical system via the study of chaotic behaviour obtained from the predicted time series. Next, the hybrid ANN+PSO algorithm was complemented with a Gaussian stochastic procedure (called {\it stochastic} hybrid ANN+PSO) in order to obtain a new estimator of the predictions, which also allowed us to compute uncertainties of predictions for noisy Mackey--Glass chaotic time series. Thus, we studied the impact of noise for several cases with a white noise level ($\sigma_{N}$) from 0.01 to 0.1.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

A Multi-Gene Genetic Programming Application for Predicting Students Failure at School

Several efforts to predict student failure rate (SFR) at school accurately still remains a core problem area faced by many in the educational sector. The procedure for forecasting SFR are rigid and most often times require data scaling or conversion into binary form such as is the case of the logistic model which may lead to lose of information and effect size attenuation. Also, the high number of factors, incomplete and unbalanced dataset, and black boxing issues as in Artificial Neural Networks and Fuzzy logic systems exposes the need for more efficient tools. Currently the application of Genetic Programming (GP) holds great promises and has produced tremendous positive results in different sectors. In this regard, this study developed GPSFARPS, a software application to provide a robust solution to the prediction of SFR using an evolutionary algorithm known as multi-gene genetic programming. The approach is validated by feeding a testing data set to the evolved GP models. Result obtained from GPSFARPS simulations show its unique ability to evolve a suitable failure rate expression with a fast convergence at 30 generations from a maximum specified generation of 500. The multi-gene system was also able to minimize the evolved model expression and accurately predict student failure rate using a subset of the original expressionComment: 14 pages, 9 figures, Journal paper. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1403.0623 by other author

Short-term electric load forecasting using computational intelligence methods

Accurate time series forecasting is a key issue to support individual and organizational decision making. In this paper, we introduce several methods for short-term electric load forecasting. All the presented methods stem from computational intelligence techniques: Random Forest, Nonlinear Autoregressive Neural Networks, Evolutionary Support Vector Machines and Fuzzy Inductive Reasoning. The performance of the suggested methods is experimentally justified with several experiments carried out, using a set of three time series from electricity consumption in the real-world domain, on different forecasting horizons

Air Quality Prediction in Smart Cities Using Machine Learning Technologies Based on Sensor Data: A Review

The influence of machine learning technologies is rapidly increasing and penetrating almost in every field, and air pollution prediction is not being excluded from those fields. This paper covers the revision of the studies related to air pollution prediction using machine learning algorithms based on sensor data in the context of smart cities. Using the most popular databases and executing the corresponding filtration, the most relevant papers were selected. After thorough reviewing those papers, the main features were extracted, which served as a base to link and compare them to each other. As a result, we can conclude that: (1) instead of using simple machine learning techniques, currently, the authors apply advanced and sophisticated techniques, (2) China was the leading country in terms of a case study, (3) Particulate matter with diameter equal to 2.5 micrometers was the main prediction target, (4) in 41% of the publications the authors carried out the prediction for the next day, (5) 66% of the studies used data had an hourly rate, (6) 49% of the papers used open data and since 2016 it had a tendency to increase, and (7) for efficient air quality prediction it is important to consider the external factors such as weather conditions, spatial characteristics, and temporal features

Evolving neuro-fuzzy tools for system classification and prediction

"Classification and prediction algorithims have recently become very powerful tools to a wide array of real-world applications. Some real world applications include system condition monitoring, bioinformatics, robotics, predictive control, earthquake prediction, weather forecasting, stock market and traffic pattern prediction, just to name a few. Within this work, several novel approaches, as well as modifications to some existing approaches, are introduced in order to improve the performance of current classification and prediction paradigms. In the first section of this work, a novel weighted recurrent neuro-fuzzy inference system is introduced alongside two existing neural networks. It is found that the novel design outperforms both the existing neural networks in terms of equal-step and sequential-step inputs for time-series forecasting. The second contribution of this work is the development of a novel evolving clustering algorithim for classification and prediction. This particular algorithim starts without any priori knowledge of the distribution of the data set. The novel design is capable of revealing the true cluster configuration in a single pass of the data, estimating the location and variance of each cluster. After a rigorous performance evaluation, it is found that the novel design outperforms many existing clustering approaches including the well-known potential-based evolving Takagi-Sugeno (eTS) clustering scheme. The third and fourth contributions of this work are the development of a second novel clustering technique and a novel hybrid training technique. The clustering technique is a combination of the aforementioned scheme and the potential-based technique. The new training algorithm is a combination of the decoupled-extended Kalman filter (for the backward pass) and the recursive least-sequares estimate (for the forward pass). It is found that the novel clustering technique outperforms many available clustering techniques. Also, the novel training algorithm is proven to outperform most existing training techniques."--Abstrac

An Intelligent System for Induction Motor Health Condition Monitoring

Induction motors (IMs) are commonly used in both industrial applications and household appliances. An IM online condition monitoring system is very useful to identify the IM fault at its initial stage, in order to prevent machinery malfunction, decreased productivity and even catastrophic failures. Although a series of research efforts have been conducted over decades for IM fault diagnosis using various approaches, it still remains a challenging task to accurately diagnose the IM fault due to the complex signal transmission path and environmental noise. The objective of this thesis is to develop a novel intelligent system for more reliable IM health condition monitoring. The developed intelligent monitor consists of two stages: feature extraction and decision-making. In feature extraction, a spectrum synch technique is proposed to extract representative features from collected stator current signals for fault detection in IM systems. The local bands related to IM health conditions are synchronized to enhance fault characteristic features; a central kurtosis method is suggested to extract representative information from the resulting spectrum and to formulate an index for fault diagnosis. In diagnostic pattern classification, an innovative selective boosting technique is proposed to effectively classify representative features into different IM health condition categories. On the other hand, IM health conditions can also be predicted by applying appropriate prognostic schemes. In system state forecasting, two forecasting techniques, a model-based pBoost predictor and a data-driven evolving fuzzy neural predictor, are proposed to forecast future states of the fault indices, which can be employed to further improve the accuracy of IM health condition monitoring. A novel fuzzy inference system is developed to integrate information from both the classifier and the predictor for IM health condition monitoring. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques and integrated monitor is verified through simulations and experimental tests corresponding to different IM states such as IMs with broken rotor bars and with the bearing outer race defect. The developed techniques, the selective boosting classifier, pBoost predictor and evolving fuzzy neural predictor, are effective tools that can be employed in a much wider range of applications. In order to select the most reliable technique in each processing module so as to provide a more positive assessment of IM health conditions, some more techniques are also proposed for each processing purpose. A conjugate Levebnerg-Marquardt method and a Laplace particle swarm technique are proposed for model parameter training, whereas a mutated particle filter technique is developed for system state prediction. These strong tools developed in this work could also be applied to fault diagnosis and other applications