Stepping towards the industrial 6th Sense

我们人类通过视觉、听觉、嗅觉、触觉和味觉这五种感官从周围环境中获取信息。感觉刺激被转换成电信号，作为神经冲动数据与我们的大脑交流。真正吸引人的是通讯网络。当一种或多种感官失效（损伤）时，我们能够重建沟通，并改善我们的其他感官，以保护我们免受即将到来的危险。此外，我们已经开发了“推理”机制，有效地分析当前数据并产生未来的愿景，我们可以称之为第六感（6S）。是否有可能开发一种6S技术来预测灾难性的灾难？工业过程已经配备了五种感官：声学传感器的“听觉”，气体和液体传感器的“嗅觉”，摄像头的“视觉”，振动传感器的“触觉”和成分监测器的“味觉”。通过形成自适应自修复的传感网络，利用有限的数据进行深度思考分析，并通过集成系统建模预测事件的先后顺序，可以实现6S。该项目是通过将过程系统工程、无线通信网络、机器人和自主系统方面的研究专业知识结合起来，为工业过程开发6S技术的第一步。在这个项目中开发的6S技术可以进一步探索到广泛的工业和制造过程。

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.