Anomaly Detection for Hydraulic Systems under Test

This work focuses on computationally efficient difference metrics of time series and compares two different unsupervised methods for anomaly classification. It takes place in the domain of hardware systems testing for reliability, where several structurally identical devices are tested at the same time with a load expected in their lifetime use. The devices perform different maneuvers in predefined testing cycles. It is possible that rare, unexpected system defects appear. They often show up in the measured data signals of the system, for example as a decrease in the output pressure of a pump. Due to the intended aging of the parts under load, the measured data also exhibits a concept drift, i.e. a shift in the data distribution. It is of interest to detect anomalous behavior as early as possible to reduce cost, save time and enable accurate root-cause-analysis. We formulate this problem as an anomaly detection task on periodic multivariate time series data. Experiments are evaluated using an open access hydraulic test bench data set by Helwig et al. [1]. The method's performance under concept drift is tested by simulating an aging system using the same data set. We find that Mean Squared Error towards the median in combination with the Modified z-Score is the most robust method for this use case. The solution can be applied from the beginning of a hardware testing cycle. The computations are intuitive to understand, and the classification results can be visualized for better interpretability and plausibility analysis.

Automated summary

This study focuses on computationally efficient difference metrics of time series and compares two different unsupervised methods for anomaly classification in the domain of hardware systems testing. The research found that Mean Squared Error towards the median in combination with the Modified z-Score is the most robust method for detecting anomalies, especially under concept drift.