Semi-supervised soft sensor development based on dynamic dimensionality reduction-assisted large-scale pseudo label optimization and sample-weighted quality-relevant deep learning

Abstract

Data-driven soft sensors have become popular tools for estimating critical quality variables in the process industry. However, in practical applications, it is very common that the unlabeled data are abundant but the labeled data are scarce, which poses a great challenge for developing high-performance data-based soft sensors. Thus, a dynamic dimensionality reduction-assisted large-scale pseudo label optimization method (DDR-LSPLO) is proposed for achieving sample expansion. This method repeatedly converts the LSPLO issue into a reduced-dimension pseudo label optimization problem with the low-confidence pseudo labels as new decision variables during the evolutionary optimization process. Meanwhile, to tackle the sample imbalance problem resulting from the inclusion of large-scale pseudo-labeled samples, a sample expansion and weighting-based quality-relevant autoencoder (SEWQAE) is developed for semi-supervised soft sensor modeling. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed DDR-LSPLO and SEWQAE methods are verified through an industrial chlortetracycline (CTC) fermentation process and a simulated Tennessee Eastman (TE) chemical process.