Papers for

industrial maintenance teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Risk aware reinforcement learning gets certified bounds under attacks

Certifying Lower Bounds for Risk-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning under Adversarial State Perturbations

Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) agents deployed in real-world environments are often vulnerable to adversarial perturbations in state observations, creating risks in safety-critical applications. Certification methods can improve robustness against adversarial perturbations by providing lower bounds on expected cumulative rewards. Existing certification methods, however, mainly focus on risk-neutral objectives. In this paper, we extend certification methods to risk-sensitive objectives by establishing lower bounds on the exponential utility of cumulative rewards under $l_{p}$-norm-bounded state adversarial perturbations ($1\leq p <\infty$). By introducing a $φ$-divergence relaxation of the perturbation set, we formulate the risk-sensitive certification problem as a convex optimization and derive its dual to obtain a tractable approximation of the certified lower bound. We further propose an empirical method that improves certified lower bounds by selecting the training risk-aversion parameter $β$ independently of the risk level used during evaluation. Experiments on both OpenAI Gym environments and a machine replacement problem show that, compared to risk-neutral training, risk-averse training generally yields policies with higher certified lower bounds, particularly under larger perturbation budgets. Moreover, under both risk-neutral and risk-averse evaluation settings, increasing risk aversion during training leads to non-monotonic certification performance, where certified lower bounds initially improve but eventually decrease due to overly conservative policies.

Wed 9 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Reinforcement learning agents can be tricked by small changes in their inputs, which is risky in important tasks. The authors extend methods that can guarantee minimum performance under such attacks, focusing on measures that care about risk rather than just average outcomes. They develop a mathematical framework that turns this into an easier problem to solve and propose a way to improve these guarantees by adjusting how risk is handled during training. Tests on common simulation tasks and a maintenance problem show that training for risk awareness generally improves safety certificates, but too much caution can sometimes hurt performance.
Open 2609.10866v1

Real-time detection of irregular events in periodic data streams

Real-time and adaptive anomaly detection algorithm for cyclostationary models

Abstract: This article introduces PeriodicCALM, an effective real-time anomaly detection framework designed for cyclostationary data streams. While classical cyclostationary processes feature periodically time-varying statistical properties, real-world signals often contain recurring impulsive components that conceal abnormal behavior. Existing real-time methods for struggle with these dynamics, frequently misinterpreting phase-dependent variability as non-cyclic anomalies and causing excessive false alarms. To address this, PeriodicCALM incorporates cycle-dependent variability to systematically ignore regular cyclic impulses while accurately isolating genuine anomalies. Operating in real time with continuous retraining capabilities, the method adapts dynamically to evolving signal characteristics. Comparative evaluations against the baseline CALM framework using simulated data demonstrate significant improvements in detection accuracy and training efficiency, alongside a reduction in prediction latency. Furthermore, the practical utility of PeriodicCALM is validated on real-world vibration signals collected from a compressor monitoring system.

Tue 8 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Some data has patterns that repeat over time, but these patterns can hide problems or errors. The authors created a new method called PeriodicCALM that can spot true unusual events without getting confused by normal repeating patterns. It works quickly as the data comes in and adjusts itself over time to stay accurate. Tests with both simulated and real data show it works better and faster than older methods.
Open 2609.09326v1

Quantile-based feature extraction improves predictive maintenance accuracy

Quantile-Led Feature Extraction for Multi-Horizon Predictive Maintenance in Industrial Manufacturing Systems

Abstract: In data-driven predictive maintenance (PdM), feature extraction is usually treated as fixed preprocessing: a descriptor set is chosen once and reused while the downstream model or forecasting horizon changes. This paper isolates the representation-learning stage and presents a quantile-led feature-extraction framework based on a dual-stage MLP-QRNN hierarchy. QRNN1 learns a broad ten-quantile conditional distribution for each sensor channel, while skip-connected QRNN2 refines a retained mid-tail quantile set into compact, channel-resolved, distribution-aware features. A fixed thirteen-pipeline ablation spans 1-hour, 70-hour, and 30-day regimes across 72 machines in 9 industrial facilities, with the downstream temporal classifier held fixed within each regime. Increasing the retained mid-tail set from two to four quantiles improves 30- and 60-minute F1-score, reaching 75.92% and 72.44% with attention enabled. The results also show that representations do not transfer reliably beyond their design horizon unless feature capacity, temporal embedding, activation strategy, and sensor breadth are scaled with the forecasting task. The unmodified short-horizon extractor falls to 42.90% F1 at 70 hours, whereas horizon-conditioned extractors reach 60.38% at 70 hours and 79.97% at 30 days. The framework therefore supports treating PdM feature extraction as a horizon-dependent representational stage rather than fixed preprocessing.

Mon 7 SeptArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Predictive maintenance helps spot machine problems before they cause failures. Usually, feature extraction from sensor data is fixed even if the prediction time changes. The authors introduce a new method that adapts feature extraction based on the forecasting horizon, using quantiles of sensor data distributions. This method works better for both short and long-term predictions, improving accuracy across different timescales.
Open 2609.07533v1