TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to maintenance systems for machines, and more specifically to validating behavioral models utilized for unsupervised learning of machine operation.

BACKGROUND

Communications, processing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other computerized technologies have advanced significantly in recent years, heralding in new fields of technology and production. Further, many of the industrial technologies employed since or before the 1970s are still used today. Existing solutions related to these industrial technologies have typically seen minor improvements, thereby increasing production and yield only slightly.

In modern manufacturing practices, manufacturers must often meet strict production timelines and provide flawless or nearly flawless production quality. As a result, these manufacturers risk heavy losses whenever an unexpected machine failure occurs. A machine failure is an event that occurs when a machine deviates from correct service. Errors, which are typically deviations from the correct state of the machine, are not necessarily failures, but may lead to and indicate potential future failures. Besides failures, errors may otherwise cause unusual machine behavior that may affect performance.

The average failure-based machine downtime for typical manufacturers (i.e., the average amount of time in which production shuts down, either in part or in whole, due to machine failure) is 17 days per year, i.e., 17 days of lost production and, hence revenue. In the case of a typical 450 megawatt power turbine, for example, a single day of downtime can cost a manufacturer over $3 million US in lost revenue. Such downtime may have additional costs related to repair, safety precautions, and the like.

In energy power plants, billions of US dollars are spent annually on ensuring reliability. Specifically, billions of dollars are spent on backup systems and redundancies utilized to minimize production downtimes. Additionally, monitoring systems may be utilized to identify failures quickly, thereby speeding up the return to production when downtime occurs. However, existing monitoring systems typically identify failures only after or immediately before downtime begins.

Further, existing solutions for monitoring machine failures typically rely on a set of predetermined rules for each machine. These rules sets do not account for all data that may be collected with respect to the machine, and may only be used for checking particular key parameters while ignoring the rest. Moreover, these rules sets must be provided in advance by engineers or other human analysts. As a result, only some of the collected data may be actually used by existing solutions, thereby resulting in wasted use of computing resources related to transmission, storage, and processing of unused data. Further, failure to consider all relevant data may result in missed or otherwise inaccurate determination of failures.

Additionally, existing solutions often rely on periodic testing at predetermined intervals. Thus, even existing solutions that can predict failures in advance typically return requests to perform machine maintenance even when the machine is not in immediate danger of failing. Such premature replacement results in wasted materials and expenses spent replacing parts that are still functioning properly. Further, such existing solutions often determine failures only after failure occurs. As a result, such failures may not be prevented, resulting in down time and lost revenue.

Further, existing monitoring and maintenance solutions often require dedicated testing equipment. Consequently, these solutions typically require specialized operators who are well-trained in the operation of each monitoring and maintenance system. Requiring specialized operators can be inconvenient and costly, and may introduce potential sources of human error. Additionally, given the sheer amount of data that may be collected for any given machine in addition to minute fluctuations in data, a human analyst is not capable of adequately determining upcoming failures.

Moreover, existing solutions for monitoring machine performance are typically configured to only monitor particular types of machines and/or sensors. As a result, such existing monitoring solutions cannot be utilized for other types of machines and sensors. Further, any changes to a machine and/or its sensors (e.g., replacing a machine with a different type of machine, replacing an engine of a machine with a different engine, etc.) may result in inaccurate monitoring using such existing solutions.

It would therefore be advantageous to provide a solution that would overcome the challenges noted above.

SUMMARY

A summary of several example embodiments of the disclosure follows. This summary is provided for the convenience of the reader to provide a basic understanding of such embodiments and does not wholly define the breadth of the disclosure. This summary is not an extensive overview of all contemplated embodiments, and is intended to neither identify key or critical elements of all embodiments nor to delineate the scope of any or all aspects. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts of one or more embodiments in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is presented later. For convenience, the term “some embodiments” may be used herein to refer to a single embodiment or multiple embodiments of the disclosure.

Certain embodiments disclosed herein include a method for validating unsupervised machine learning models. The method comprises: analyzing, via unsupervised machine learning, a plurality of sensory inputs associated with a machine, wherein the unsupervised machine learning outputs at least one normal behavior pattern of the machine; generating, based on the at least one normal behavior pattern, at least one artificial anomaly, wherein each artificial anomaly deviates from the at least one normal behavior pattern; injecting the at least one artificial anomaly into the plurality of sensory inputs to create an artificial dataset; and analyzing the artificial dataset to determine whether a candidate model is a valid representation of operation of the machine, wherein analyzing the artificial dataset further comprises running the candidate model using the artificial dataset as an input.

Certain embodiments disclosed herein also include a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon instructions for causing a processing circuitry to perform a process, the process comprising: analyzing, via unsupervised machine learning, a plurality of sensory inputs associated with a machine, wherein the unsupervised machine learning outputs at least one normal behavior pattern of the machine; generating, based on the at least one normal behavior pattern, at least one artificial anomaly, wherein each artificial anomaly deviates from the at least one normal behavior pattern; injecting the at least one artificial anomaly into the plurality of sensory inputs to create an artificial dataset; and analyzing the artificial dataset to determine whether a candidate model is a valid representation of operation of the machine, wherein analyzing the artificial dataset further comprises running the candidate model using the artificial dataset as an input.

Certain embodiments disclosed herein also include a system for validating unsupervised machine learning models. The system comprises: a processing circuitry; and a memory, the memory containing instructions that, when executed by the processing circuitry, configure the system to: analyze, via unsupervised machine learning, a plurality of sensory inputs associated with a machine, wherein the unsupervised machine learning outputs at least one normal behavior pattern of the machine; generate, based on the at least one normal behavior pattern, at least one artificial anomaly, wherein each artificial anomaly deviates from the at least one normal behavior pattern; inject the at least one artificial anomaly into the plurality of sensory inputs to create an artificial dataset; and analyze the artificial dataset to determine whether a candidate model is a valid representation of operation of the machine, wherein analyzing the artificial dataset further comprises running the candidate model using the artificial dataset as an input.

