Deep Learning Stranded Neural Network Model for the Detection of Sensory Triggered Events

Abstract

Maintenance processes are of high importance for industrial plants. They have to be performed regularly and uninterruptedly. To assist maintenance personnel, industrial sensors monitored by distributed control systems observe and collect several machinery parameters in the cloud. Then, machine learning algorithms try to match patterns and classify abnormal behaviors. This paper presents a new deep learning model called stranded-NN. This model uses a set of NN models of variable layer depths depending on the input. This way, the proposed model can classify different types of emergencies occurring in different time intervals; real-time, close-to-real-time, or periodic. The proposed stranded-NN model has been compared against existing fixed-depth MLPs and LSTM networks used by the industry. Experimentation has shown that the stranded-NN model can outperform fixed depth MLPs 15–21% more in terms of accuracy for real-time events and at least 10–14% more for close-to-real-time events. Regarding LSTMs of the same memory depth as the NN strand input, the stranded NN presents similar results in terms of accuracy for a specific number of strands. Nevertheless, the stranded-NN model’s ability to maintain multiple trained strands makes it a superior and more flexible classification and prediction solution than its LSTM counterpart, as well as being faster at training and classification.