Building Robust Prediction Models for Defective Sensor Data Using Artificial Neural Networks

Sensors are susceptible to failure when exposed to extreme conditions over long periods of time. Besides they can be affected by noise or electrical interference. Models (Machine Learning or others) obtained from these faulty and noisy sensors may be less reliable. In this paper, we propose a data augmentation approach for making neural networks more robust to missing and faulty sensor data. This approach is shown to be effective in a real life industrial application that uses data of various sensors to predict the wear of an automotive fuel-system component. Empirical results show that the proposed approach leads to more robust neural network in this particular application than existing methods.