A Transfer Entropy Based Approach for Fault Isolation in Industrial Robots

In this paper, we cast the problem of fault isolation in industrial robots as that of causal analysis within coupled dynamical processes and evaluate the related efficacy of the information-theoretic approach of transfer entropy. To create a realistic and exhaustive dataset, we simulate wear-induced failure by increasing friction coefficient on select axes within an in-house robotic simulation tool that incorporates an elastic gearbox model. The source axis of failure is identified as one which has the highest net transfer entropy across all pairs of axes. In an exhaustive simulation study, we vary the friction successively in each axis across three common industrial tasks: pick and place, spot welding, and arc welding. Our results show that transfer entropy-based approach is able to detect the axis of failure more than 80% of the time when the friction coefficient is 5% above the nominal value and always when friction coefficient is 10% above the nominal value. The transfer entropy approach is more than twice as accurate as cross-correlation, a classical time series analysis used to identify directional dependence among processes.