Distributed Neuro-Fuzzy Feature Forecasting
approach for Condition Monitoring
Daniel Zurita, Jess A. Carino, Miguel Delgado, Juan A. Ortega
MCIA Research Center, Department of Electronic Engineering
Technical University of Catalonia (UPC)
Rbla. San Nebridi n22, Gaia Research Building, 08222 Terrassa, Spain
{daniel.zurita, jesus.carino, miguel.delgado, juan.antonio.ortega}@mcia.upc.edu
AbstractThe industrial machinery reliability represents a
critical factor in order to assure the proper operation of the whole
productive process. In regard with this, diagnosis schemes based
on physical magnitudes acquisition, features calculation, features
reduction and classification are being applied. However, in this
paper, in order to enhance the condition monitoring capabilities, a
forecasting approach is proposed, in which not only the current
status of the system under monitoring in identified, diagnosis, but
also the future condition is assessed, prognosis. The novelties of the
proposed methodology are based on a distributed features
forecasting approach by means of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference
system models. The proposed method is validated by means of an
accelerated bearing degradation experimental platform.
Keywords Artificial intelligence, Condition monitoring,
Feature extraction, Fuzzy neural networks, Machine learning,
Prognosis, Remaining Useful Life, Time domain analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Unexpected industrial machinery breakdowns cause a high
impact in the factory production parameters, which involves
economic losses, machine repair and replacement costs and
associated labor and down-times losses [1]. Due to this fact,
manufacturing industries operate more often in rich data
environments, in which most of the critical parts of the
machinery, such as screws, bearings, gears, and others, are
monitored. However, the acquired information is, mainly,
associated to thresholds for alarm and machinery stoppage
purposes, and, in some cases exploited by one of the different
automatic industrial diagnosis schemes proposed since the last
decades [2-4].
However, one of the current challenges of industrial
condition monitoring is finding useful data management
schemes capable of given the future condition of the system
under monitoring, that is, prognosis approaches [5]. The
information regarding the future condition of a system or the
probability of reliable operation, represents a powerful
knowledge able to change considerably the maintenance
procedures and increase the manufacturing processes reliability
and performance. Although there exists a wide range of
techniques and methodologies, the prognosis strategies can be
divided mainly in three approaches.
The first approach is based on direct forecasting. In this
approach, the acquired physical magnitudes are characterized by
a set of representative numerical features, which are the inputs
2014 IEEE Emerging Technology and Factory Automation (ETFA)
c 2014 IEEE
978-1-4799-4845-1/14/$31.00
of the prognosis model. The prognosis output represents directly
the remaining useful life of the system or the expected time to
failure. Some significant studies use an Artificial Neural
Network (ANN) based model and time domain features such as
RMS or Kurtosis to estimate the Remaining Useful Life (RUL)
[6] , other schemes, as in [7], present a previous feature reduction
stage to the RUL estimator.
The second approach can be called discrete forecasting, in
which the prognosis is related to the future condition of the
system from a predefined set of conditions. An initial health
assessment block, that is the diagnosis, gives an outcome among
the defined discrete stages, corresponding to the current
condition, then the prognostic model provides the forecasting
condition or the remaining time till the next state. Most of these
kinds of approaches are based on Hidden Markov Models, as in
[8], where starting from time domain features from a bearing
experimental test bench, the methodology estimates prognostic
metrics as the next degradation stage probability.
Finally, the third main approach corresponds conceptually to
a continuous forecasting, where the set of numerical features is
the input to the forecasting block, in order to predict their
expected evolution in time. That is, the forecasting model
projects the feature in the future and, then, the future condition
is analyzed. Recent studies, as the presented in [9, 10], propose
machine prognostic schemes for future fault propagation
assessment based on neural networks and support vector
machine.
Although direct forecasting represents the simplest approach
with proper results for systems with a reduced number of
variables, it is not able to give further information of the
degradation evolution. Discrete forecasting approaches,
however, offers higher accuracy capabilities in both health and
prognosis assessment, but the prognosis results depend critically
on the performance of the classifier, since the features are only
used in the classifications stage. The continuous approach, based
on feature evolution forecasting, presents a more complex
structure due to the fact that each feature should be forecasted
individually, which means that the number of models is equal to
the number of features. As a result, this approach is less used in
the literature, because in complex scenarios, where the
interdependences within the different variables is high, the
relation between the features is not known. However, if there are
not such dependences among the variables, the models are
simply, that is, the prognostics can be faced as a multi-regression
problem. This particularity offers more versatility in the design
phase of the model, and increases the precision of the prediction.
The contributions of this work are based on a distributed
forecasting methodology for degradation assessment based on
continuous forecasting approach. The proposed methodology is
based on a distributed prediction scheme of numerical features
calculated from acquired physical magnitudes. Once the
prediction is obtained, the future system condition is assessed by
a neural based classifier.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II introduces the
theoretical bases of the Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy
Inference System (ANFIS). In Section III the methodology to
design the degradation assessment and forecasting algorithm is
shown. Finally, in Section IV, the experimental results and the
method capabilities are tested and the results are analyzed.
II. ADAPTIVE NETWORK BASED FUZZY INFERENCE
SYSTEM
There are, currently, different techniques to design
forecasting models. However, the prognosis schemes are usually
based in the concept of hybrid prognosis; which integrates
different techniques in order to take advantages of each method
involved. In this topic, the most important hybrid system is
ANFIS [11]. This method fuses the parametric adaptability of
ANN, and the generalization capabilities of the fuzzy logic.
ANFIS based prognostic systems offers a very reliable and
robust condition predictor, since it can capture the system
dynamic behavior quickly and accurately [12, 13].
The neural-fuzzy architecture can be divided in five different
layers, as shown in Fig. 1. For the concrete architecture shown
in the figure, this method aims to find a relation between the
output, z, and a set of inputs, x and y, which are fuzzified by
means of the membership functions, A1, A2, B1, and B2. The
output is computed regarding the pertinence of the inputs and
the two if-then rules as defined in (1).
The input layer, L1, is in charge of addressing the input signal
to a node. Each node, i, of each layer, j, is an adaptive node with
an output function, , defined in (2), as the membership values,
where Ai and Bi are the degree of pertinence to the membership
functions.
Fig. 1 Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System scheme with two
inputs, four membership functions, two rules and one output.
In the fuzzification layer, L2, the weight of each rule is
computed by means of a fuzzy AND operation that multiplies
the input signals. The outputs represent the activation variables
of a fuzzy rule (3). The fuzzy rules definition layer, L3, provides
the antecedent consequence statements of fuzzy logic. These
statements provide the condition of the fault being monitored
given the linguistic operating range of the inputs.
Each node calculates the reason between the i-th activation
variable, and the sum of all the activation variables (4). The
outputs of this layer are called normalized activation variables.
In the defuzzification layer, L4, each node computes the
contribution of the i-th fuzzy rule over all the outputs (5). The
outputs of each node are named consequents. The nodes of the
output layer, L5, calculate the output signals as the summation of
all the input signals (6).
Rule 1: if A1 y 1 1 = 1 + 1 + 1
(1)
Rule 2: if A2 y 2 2 = 2 + 2 + 2
1 = () , = 1,2 1 = 2 () , = 3,4 (2)
2 = = () (), = 1,2 (3)
=
3 = , = 1,2 (4)
1 + 2
4 =
=
( + + ), = 1,2 (5)
Wi
5 = = (6)
1
= ( )
2 (7)
=1
The methodology for the training process consists on the use
of a hybrid algorithm that selects the inputs of the ANFIS system
and evaluates its result. The performance of the ANFIS models
is evaluated by means of the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE)
of the overall signal, which is defined by equation (7). Where n
is the size of the dataset, corresponds to the predicted output,
and yi to the real one.
III. ARCHITECTURE OF THE PROPOSED METHOD
The objective of the proposed Distributed Feature
Forecasting Architecture, DFFA, is to assess the current and
future degradation level of a system by modeling time domain
based feature evolutions. The future condition will be obtained
from the assessment of such individual forecasted features. The
proposed condition monitoring approach can be divided in three
different steps, as shown in Fig.2.
1) The feature calculation and selection: aims to calculate
and select depending on selection criteria, the most
suitable subset of features to represent the predefined
degradation conditions.
2) The distributed forecasting step: deals with the
generation, training, and validation of the ANFIS based
forecasting models responsible of predict the evolution
of each selected feature based on a predefined prediction
horizon, p.
3) The future health assessment: includes the integration of
the distributed prognostic models to assess and predict
the current condition, S(t), and future condition of the
system, S(t+p),by combining the calculated features
before and after the forecasting model respectively.
Fig. 2 Distributed Distributed Feature Forecasting approach for current and forecasted Condition Monitoring assessment. The proposed scheme is formed by three
steps: step 1 - feature calculation and selection, step 2 - individual forecasting models generation and, step 3 - future health assessment.

A. Feature calculation and selection

Starting from the physical magnitudes acquired during the
considered operating conditions of the system, it is required to
characterize the signal waveform by numerical features.
Although frequency and time-frequency based features can be
calculated, statistical time features show a good trade-off
between signal dynamics and low computational requirements.
Moreover, if it is considered that the system works under
stationary conditions, the statistical time features represents,
definitively, proper condition characterization indexes [8].
Some of the most common statistical time features are the
mean value (1st moment), the maximum value, the Root Mean
Square (RMS), the variance (2nd moment), the skewness (3rd
moment), the kurtosis (4th moment), the crest factor and the
shape factor. All the mentioned time domain features are listed
in Table 1, where n is the length of the signal, and xk is the k-th
sample of the signal. However, in order to optimize the set of
features used to characterize the signals, usually, feature
reduction approaches are applied. This procedure allows to
reduce the amount of data needed for the analysis, reduce
complexity and computational cost. The presented DFFA
method aims at predicting the evolution of those features that are
more related to the degradation mechanism.
Table 1. Time domain features calculated.
1
Mean Value = (8)
=1
Max Value = max() (9)
Root Mean Square 1
This selection should be made in base of some objective
function; for prognosis and health assessment purposes, there
are different criteria for determining the suitability of a feature.
According to M. Lebold [14] criteria, a good feature must be
predictable, which means the feature should be monotonically
increasing or decreasing.
Then, the proposed criterion function proposed for selecting
the best subset of features is the fisher linear discriminant
coefficient. This coefficient is a relation of how separated are the
considered classes (predefined system conditions), regarding its
variance (how disperse are these classes) as it is mathematically
represented in in (16), where Fc is the fisher coefficient, SB is the
between-class scatter matrix which is a measure of the
separation between the projected samples of different classes as
shown in (17).
Taking into account that c is the number of classes, nc-i is the
number of samples in each class, mi is the mean of each class
and mc represent the total mean vector, N is the total number of
samples and xv is the matrix of the calculated features. SW is the
within-class scatter matrix, which is a measure of the samples
dispersion corresponding to each class (18), and Si represents the
scatter matrix for each class (19).
= (16)
= ( )( ) (17)
=1
= 2 (18)
=1

(RMS) = ( )2 (10) = ( ) ( )
=1 (19)

1
Variance 2 = ( )2 (11)
=1

B. Distributed forecasting
Shape Factor =
(SF) 1 (12) The aim is to define prognosis model for each feature able to
| |
=1 forecast how such feature will evolve among time, taking into
Crest Factor account its previous and current values. As it has been aforesaid,
(CF) = (13)
this work proposes a distributed scheme of individual feature
models. This individual analysis is made in order to simplify the
[( )3 ]
Skewness 1 = (14) forecasting procedure, increase the generalization capabilities
3
towards new data and reduce the prediction errors of the whole
Kurtosis
[( )4 ]
(15) system by analyzing each feature individually; then addressing
=
4 the forecasting problem from a distributed point of view.
 The ANFIS model for a feature F1, has a single output, which
is the predicted feature at a time horizon p, F1 (t+p). This time
horizon should be configured depending on the application, the
dynamics of the features and the forecasting requirements. The
inputs of the model are of three types, i.e. current values of the
feature to predict, F1 (t), past values of the feature, F1 (t-n), and
auxiliary inputs. It should be noted that, generally, auxiliary
inputs, are other information that helps the model to improve its
performance by detecting sudden changes in the input signal,
such as data from other features, or more information
characterizing the signal waveform of F1. The decision of
including a new input to the model should be evaluated in regard
with the temporal signature of the signal, the cross influences
between features, and the affectation of this input to the final
RMSE. The output of the model is the same feature F1 projected
over a time horizon p. As a result from this step, an ANFIS
model will be generated, trained and validated for each feature
selected. A dataset containing the predicted values of the
features will be the input to the next step of the method.
C. Future health assessment
A data fusion strategy is applied in order to combine the
information given by the forecasting model and generate a
diagnosis outcome in regard with the current and future
condition. It should be noticed that, previously, the systems
conditions must be defined in order to apply a common
classifier.
Although different classifier can be applied, the ANN is
considered as the most convenient option for most of the
problems. ANN are data-driven self-adaptive information
processing method inspired in biological systems, and represents
the most commonly found data-driven technique in the
prognosis literature [15]. It is composed by a number of
interconnected processing elements (neurons) working at the
same time to solve a specific problem. ANN represents a no-
lineal, multivariate and no-parametric algorithm for pattern
recognition and time series modelling applications [16].
The ANN will be trained with the original feature space in
order to detect the specific degradation pattern among the
features. Once the net has been trained, it will be applied with
the original and the predicted outputs of each forecasting model
in order to assess the current and the future degradation levels,
which are the outputs of the presented method.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In this section, the proposed methodology is validated using
a real experimental data related to bearing degradation
evolution. These kinds of tests are known as run-to-failure
experiments. This kind of information, although highly
significant for electro-mechanical systems monitoring, is
difficult to be obtained from real industrial applications. Due to
this fact, in order to obtain such information, long-time
acquisition (weeks, months or even years depending on the
application), are ideally required. However, in this work, an
accelerated live test bench has been used, where the elements are
forced to work beyond their nominal values, and then, the
degradation profiles can be extracted.
A. Description of the experimental platform
The experimental datasets come from the bearing failure
diagnostic and prognostics platform [17], which provides access
to accelerated bearings degradation tests. The test bench, as it is
shown in Fig.3, is composed by the speed variation, torque
transmission and the load profile generation. A cyclic radial load
is applied on the external bearing under test in order to simulate
its mechanical stress conditions. The experiment starts at a fixed
speed condition, and stops when the measured vibration at the
bearing under test is higher than 20g. It should be noticed that,
in order to speed up the degradation, the applied radial load
exceeds the maximal load supported by the bearing. During the
experiments any kind of failure (inner race, outer race, ball or
cage) could occur. This fact allow better representation of a real
industrial scenario [18].
Regarding the test bench instrumentation, two high
frequency accelerometers (DYTRAN 3035B), are mounted on
the bearing external race in order to measure the horizontal and
the vertical accelerations. In addition, the monitoring system
includes one PT100 to measure the bearings temperature, which
is placed near the external ring of the bearing under test. The
signals are acquired by means of a NI DAQ card; the
acceleration signals are acquired in successive windows with
duration of 1/10 seconds, repeated every 10 seconds, with a
sampling frequency of 25.6 Hz. Similarly, the temperature
signal is acquired every minute with a sampling frequency of 10
Hz.
Fig. 3 Overview of PRONOSTIA experimental platform [17].
Two different experiments from the PRONOSTIAs
database under the same operating conditions have been
selected. The first dataset will be used to train both forecasting
model and the classification algorithm of the proposed method;
the second set will be used to test and validate the performance
of the method against new data with a similar behavior. The
characteristics of the selected datasets for this experimental
validation could be seen in Table 2.
Three different discrete health states have been identified by
analysing the evolution of the vibration amplitude, as shown in
Fig.4. These degradation degrees are related to the RUL of the
bearing under test. Accordingly, the first health status (1st class)
corresponds to the normal functioning of the bearing, and goes
from the starting point 100% to the 51 % of the RUL. The second
status (2nd class) represent the degradation procedure of the Good discrimination capabilities between the different
bearing and goes from the 50 to the 6% of the RUL. Finally, the degradation classes can be observed for both data sets; in
critical failure of the bearing (3rd class) is represented the last 5% addition, the degradation samples distribution appears to be
of the RUL. monotonically increasing, which is a sign of suitability of the
Table 2. Main characteristics of the used datasets for the experimental
selected features for assessing the condition of the bearings. It
validation. can be observed that the training set, despite it takes less time
to reach the final degradation level, is more progressive than the
Set Experiment Duration Conditions
validation test. This differences in the dynamics of the sets will
help to assess the proposed methodology performance.
Training Bearing 1_4 14000 sec 1800 Rpm
Validation Bearing 1_1 28000 sec 4000 N

Fig. 4 Proposed classes represented over the RMS value of the X-axis
acceleration. The classes are based on different RUL estimation ranges.

B. Feature calculation and selection

From the three acquired magnitudes of the training set
(acceleration in axes X and Y, and temperature) the time domain
features specified in Table 1 are calculated. Therefore, a total
amount of 24 features is obtained for each measurement. With Fig. 5 Best features calculated over the training and the validation set. Note that
this set of feature, different subsets of features with different the evolution towards the final breakdown of the bearing can be appreciated in
all the features.
dimensions will be evaluated and sorted regarding their
discriminant capabilities in regard with the defined classes.
Then, the subset with the highest discriminant coefficient will be a)
selected, and each feature from this subset will be forecasted
with an individual prognosis model in the next stage. For this
reason, the maximum feature subset dimension has been limited
to three in this application, in order to have a maximum of three
prediction models, which has been validated as a proper
dimensionality to maintain more than the 90% of the data
variance.
As a result of the assessment of the different sets of features
by (16), the best feature subset is obtained corresponding, for this
application, to the variance of the acceleration in X, the variance
of the acceleration in Y, and the maximum value of the b)
temperature. Then, each measurement is characterized by three
features. The temporal signature of the selected features is
shown in Fig.5 for both training (a) and validation (b) datasets.
Analyzing these figures, it must be noticed that the sets
present different temporal evolution. That is, the training set
double the degradation speed of the test set. Moreover, the test
set presents a faster final degradation procedure. Additionally,
the failure occurred in the training set seems to be severe, hence
the final feature amplitude and the slope in the breaking point is
higher. These differences represent the required generalization
capabilities of the models. Accordingly to the results the feature
Fig. 6 Resulting feature space versus the different degradation stages in a) the
space with the selected best set of features is shown in Fig.6 for training set and b) the validation set.
both the training and validation sets.
C. Training procedure of the method
The next step in the methodology is to generate and train, for
each feature, the ANFIS models with the training set. First of all,
the prediction horizon p of the models should be selected. For
this concrete experiment, the horizon has been configured to
detect the critical failure (3rd class) before it occurs; which means
that at least it should be able to predict a 5% of the RUL of the
bearing. For this application, this consideration means that the
prediction horizon is configured with a time of 710 seconds (71
samples).
The three ANFIS models have been configured with the
same structure, which was defined in section III. For this
concrete application, the total amount of inputs considered is
five and consists on: (i) the current value of the feature, F1(t); (ii)
past values of the feature delayed n1 samples, F1(t-n1); (iii)
another past value of the feature delayed n2 samples, F1(t-n2);
(iv) auxiliary input, the accumulate derivative of the feature
1 () ; (v) auxiliary input, derivative of the most related
feature 2 () . Each input is fuzzyfied by means of two
generalized bell-shaped membership functions. The selection of
the inputs has been done based on experience, recommendations
and automatic searching procedures.
In order to automate the model inputs related with the past
values of the feature, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been applied
to find the best past values of the feature, n1 and n2, which
minimize the RMSE prediction error of the ANFIS. The found
values are n1= 51 and n2=94 for the training dataset, and will be
maintained for the validation set.
The derivative input corresponds to the derivative value of
the corresponding feature in a specific time window, and
represents a significant feature evolution characterization
parameter. It compresses the information about the evolution of
the signal, and including other features is interesting for the
purpose to help the model with the sudden changes of the
predicted signal. In regard with the influence of the derivative
input, this can be appreciated in Fig.7. There is a loss of
performance in the model without derivative inputs when the
target signal presents sudden changes, so the utility of the
auxiliary inputs to improve the model performance is
demonstrated.
Fig. 7 Performance after the training procedure in order to show the influence
of the derivative inputs (5 inputs model with differential, diff) versus a model
which only considers current and previous values of the predicted feature (3
inputs).
The different models have been trained, using the training
dataset, by means of a hybrid learning algorithm; the epochs
during the training procedure have been limited to 20. The
resulting performance of the trained models is validated trough
the achieved RMSE; the training result for the maximum value
of the temperature is shown, as an example, in Fig.7. Once the
three ANFIS models have been trained, a predicted feature space
can be obtained with the training dataset as can be seen in Fig.8.
The space present a similar geometry that the one presented in
Fig.6.a with the initial set of features.
Fig. 8 Predicted feature space resulting from the training of the three ANFIS
models using the training set (p=71).
After the generation of the ANFIS models, it is time to
configure the health assessment stage. This health assessment is
based on a neural classifier that detects the degradation pattern
within the features. For this application, a multi-layer ANN has
been configured with one hidden layer which is composed of 6
hidden neurons. The neurons have been configured with a
sigmoid activation function, which is recommended for
classification problems involving multiple independent
attributes. Once the network has been defined and configured, it
is trained by means of classical backpropagation algorithm. The
data used is the initial training set without the application of the
ANFIS models; finally, the ANN is tested by means of the
validation set.
The obtained confusion matrix for the validation set is shown
in Table 3, the performance of the classification is 89.8% for the
validation set. It can be observed that the critical class (3rd class)
is always well classified, hence its signature is the most
different, and thus its associated pattern is easier to be identified
by the ANN. Furthermore, the ANN presents some misclassified
samples (below 5%) between the classes 1 and 2. This is due to
the fact that run-to-failure experiments present a characteristic
continuous pattern that can cause overlapping between two
consecutive classes. These overlapping areas are known as
conflictive regions.
Table 3. Confusion Matrix extracted from the ANN with the validation set
before the prediction made by the ANFIS model. A total classification rate of
89.8% is achieved with this dataset.
Output\Target Class 1 Class 2 Class 3
Class 1 1166 0 0
Class 2 236 1212 0
Class 3 0 49 140
a) b) 25 c)
30 Real Var x Real Var y 160
Real Max Temp.
Predicted Var x 20 Predicted Var y Predicted Max Temp.
25 150

Max temperature
Variance in y
Variance in x

20 15
140
15
10
130
10
5
5 120

500 1000 1500 2000 2500 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Time in Acq.(1=10s) Time in Acq.(1=10s) Time in Acq.(1=10s)

Fig. 9 Predicted model value versus the real for the validation data set for the features a) Variance in X, b) Variance in Y c) Maximum temperature value.

performance of 85.8% which is good enough to assess the

D. Validation procedure of the method degradation of the bearings.
Once the different models have been configured and trained,
they are validated by means of the validation dataset. The
resulting predicted RMSE of the models can be seen in Table 4.
Table 4. Prediction RMSE of the generated models
Var. in X Var. in Y Max Temp
Training 0.50125 g 1.1868g 0.3005 C
Validation 0.67891 g 0.60178g 1.7102 C

A comparison between the real evolution of the feature and

the predicted one with the proposed forecasting strategy can be
seen in Fig.9.a for the variance of the acceleration in X, Fig.9.b
Fig. 10 Behavior of the generated model for the variance in X with sudden
the acceleration in Y, and Fig.9.c the maximum temperature. All changes of the signal to be predicted.
the models are capable of predicting the outputs of the validation
set with a relative low error with smooth dynamics; however, the
most difficult behaviors to be predicted are those related to
sudden changes of the signal (high derivative). In this sense, the
trained models show the highest error in these points, as shown
in Fig.10, with an achieved RMSE of 2.02 g which represents 3
times the maximum error found in the overall signal. The
predicted feature space from the ANFIS model is shown in
Fig.11 for the validation set. The evolution of the degradation is
modified if compared with the original form (Fig.6.b).
Despite this fact, the classifier is able to find the same
degradation pattern, and thus, it presents a good classification
performance of 86.1%, as shown in the confusion matrix (Table
Fig. 11 Predicted feature space of the validation set, with p=71.
5). In addition, the confusion matrix presents the same structure
that the defined in the training procedure (Table 3), the critical
class (3rd class) is well classified, while the misclassifications are
located in the conflictive regions between consecutive classes.
Table 5. Confusion Matrix extracted from the ANN with the validation set after
the prediction made by the ANFIS model. A total classification rate of 86.1%
is achieved with this dataset.
Output\Target Class 1 Class 2 Class 3
Class 1 1133 231 0
Class 2 3 911 0
Class 3 0 119 140

Additionally, if the prediction horizon is extended to an 8%

of the signal, the resulting feature space is shown in Fig.12. It Fig. 12 Predicted feature space of the validation set, with p=112.
can be seen how the feature space changes the data
representation due to the fact that the error of the model The proposed method shows promising results when its
increases. Furthermore, the neural classifier achieves a applied to systems in which the interdependences between the
different signals is not significant. However, further statistical
validation tests should be applied, such the Mariano-Debold
method proposed in [19] or the non-parametric Wilcoxon [20]
for the further validation of the prediction made by the ANFIS
models, regarding the neural classifier, to ensure the
classification ratio achieved, ranked based non-parametric test
should be applied as proposed in [21].
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, a distributed feature forecasting condition
monitoring approach has been presented and validated by means
of an accelerated bearing degradation experimental platform.
The results of the method show that the designed ANFIS models
are able to deal with the feature evolution forecasting with a low
error value. Also, the proposed neural classifier is able to assess
the current and future status of the bearings with a performance
greater than 80% for all the studied cases.
The main benefit of the proposed method is the
simplification of the modelling by analyzing the forecasting
problem from a distributed point of view. Therefore, as has been
seen, it implies a direct reduction of the models complexity, and
an increase of the precision while maintain the performance of
the posterior classifier. However, as it was expected, the error of
the method is directly related with the prediction horizon
selected, so this parameter should be carefully chosen for each
application. Furthermore, in forecasting applications, time factor
has a strong influence. Accordingly, quick dynamics or
responses that happen in a short period of time are not usually
related to the normal degradation mechanism of the system
being monitored. For this reason, although other approaches
based in frequency and time-frequency domains are also
feasible, time domain features are an adequate choice since they
present a good tradeoff between computational cost, complexity
and the characterization and the representation of the
degradation evolution in run-to-failure experiments, as has been
demonstrated with the application of the method.
The presented work could be directly applied to monitor and
predict the degradation in other simply electromechanical
actuators. Additionally, as a further work, the proposed
approach will be improved with an additional layer, which
consists on the addition of a second data fusion layer in order to
integrate the future health information from different sources.
VI. AKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of
Economy and Competitiveness, CICYT (TRA2013-46757-R),
and by the Technical University of Catalonia under the grant
FPI-158-710.
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