Stepping towards the industrial 6th Sense

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We, human beings, acquire information from our surroundings through our sensory receptors of vision, sound, smell, touch and taste -the five senses. The sensory stimulus is converted to electrical signals as nerve impulse data communicated with our brain. What is really intriguing is the communication network. When one or more senses fail (impairment), we are able to reestablish communication and improve our other senses to protect us from incoming dangers. Furthermore, we have developed the mechanism of "reasoning", effectively analyzing the present data and generating a vision of the future, which we might call our 6th Sense (6S). Is it possible to develop a 6S technology to predict a catastrophic disaster? Industrial processes are already equipped with five senses: "hearing" from acoustic sensors, "smelling" from gas and liquid sensors, "seeing" from camera, "touching" from vibration sensors and "tasting" from composition monitors. 6S could be achieved by forming a sensing network which is self-adaptive and self-repairing, carrying out deep-thinking analysis with even limited data, and predicting the sequence of events via integrated system modelling. This project is the first step towards developing a 6S technology for industrial processes by bringing together research expertise in process systems engineering, wireless communication network, robotic and autonomous systems. The 6S technology developed in this project could be further explored to a wide range of industrial and manufacturing processes.