This paper presents a novel method for fusing information from multiple sensor systems for bearing fault diagnosis. In the proposed method, a convolutional neural network is exploited to handle multiple signal sources simultaneously. The most important finding of this paper is that a deep neural network with wide structure can extract automatically and efficiently discriminant features from multiple sensor signals simultaneously. The feature fusion process is integrated into the deep neural network as a layer of that network. Compared to single sensor cases and other fusion techniques, the proposed method achieves superior performance in experiments with actual bearing data.

Bearing is one of the key components of a rotating machine. Hence, monitoring health condition of the bearing is of paramount importace. This paper develops a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO)-least squares wavelet support vector machine (PSO-LSWSVM) classifier, which is designed based on a combination between a PSO, a least squares procedure, and a new wavelet kernel function-based support vector machine (SVM), for bearing fault diagnosis. In this work, bearing fault classification is transformed into a pattern recognition problem, which consists of three stages of data processing. Firstly, a rich information dataset is built by extracting the features from the signals, which are decomposed by the nonlocal means (NLM) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Secondly, a minimum-redundancy maximum-relevance (mRMR) method is employed to determine a subset of feature that can provide an optimal performance. Thirdly, a novel classifier, namely LSWSVM, is proposed with the aid of a PSO, to provide higher classification accuracy. The key innovative science of this work is to propropose a new classifier with the aid of an new wavelet kernel type to increase the classification precision of bearing fault diagnosis. The merit features of the proposed approach are demonstrated based on a benchmark bearing dataset and a comprehensive comparison procedure.

Feature extraction from a signal is the most important step in signal-based fault diagnosis. Deep learning or deep neural network (DNN) is an effective method to extract features from signals. In this paper, a novel vibration signal-based bearing fault diagnosis method using DNN is proposed. First, the measured vibration signals are transformed into a new data form called multiple-domain image-representation. By this transformation, the task of signal-based fault diagnosis is transferred into the task of image classification. After that, a DNN with a multi-branch structure is proposed to handle the multiple-domain image representation data. The multi-branch structure of the proposed DNN helps to extract features in multiple domains simultaneously, and to lead to better feature extraction. Better feature extraction leads to a better performance of fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified via the experiments conducted with actual bearing fault signals and its comparisons with well-established published methods.

Live weight monitoring is an important step in Hanwoo (Korean cow) livestock farming. Direct and indirect methods are two available approaches for measuring live weight of cows in husbandry. Recently, thanks to the advances of sensor technology, data processing, and Machine Learning algorithms, the indirect weight measurement has been become more popular. This study was conducted to explore and evaluate the feasibility of machine learning algorithms in estimating the body live weight of Hanwoo cow using ten body measurements as input features. Various supervised Machine Learning algorithms, including Multilayer Perceptron, k-Nearest Neighbor, Light Gradient Boosting Machine, TabNet, and FT-Transformer, are employed to develop the models that estimate the body live weight using body measurement data. Data analysis is exploited to explore the correlation between the body size measurements (the features) and the weights (target values that need to be estimated) of cows. Data analysis results show that ten body measurements have a high correlation with the body live weight. High performance of all applied Machine Learning models was obtained. It can be concluded that estimating the body live weight of Hanwoo cow is feasible by utilizing Machine Learning algorithms. Among all of the tested algorithms, LightGBM regression demonstrates not only the best model in terms of performance, model complexity and development time.

Three-dimensional point cloud generation systems from scanning data of a moving camera provide extra information about an object in addition to color. They give access to various prospective study fields for researchers. With applications in animal husbandry, we can analyze the characteristics of the body parts of a dairy cow to improve its fertility and milk production efficiency. However, in the depth image generation from stereo data, previous solutions using traditional stereo matching algorithms have several drawbacks, such as poor-quality depth images and missing information in overexposed regions. Additionally, the use of one camera to reconstruct a comprehensive 3D point cloud of the dairy cow has several challenges. One of these issues is point cloud misalignment when combining two adjacent point clouds with the small overlapping area between them. In addition, another drawback is the difficulty of point cloud generation from objects which have little motion. Therefore, we proposed an integrated system using two cameras to overcome the above disadvantages. Specifically, our framework includes two main parts: data recording part applies state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks to improve the depth image quality, and dairy cow 3D reconstruction part utilizes the simultaneous localization and calibration framework in order to reduce drift and provide a better-quality reconstruction. The experimental results showed that our approach improved the quality of the generated point cloud to some extent. This work provides the input data for dairy cow characteristics analysis with a deep learning approach.