Systems and methods for anomaly recognition and detection using lifelong deep neural networks

Abstract

Industrial quality control is challenging for artificial neural networks (ANNs) and deep neural networks (DNNs) because of the nature of the processed data: there is an abundance of consistent data representing good products, but little data representing bad products. In quality control, the task is changed from conventional DNN task of 'recognize what I learned best' to “recognize what I have never seen before.” Lifelong DNN (L-DNN) technology is a hybrid semi-supervised neural architecture that combines the ability of DNNs to be trained, with high precision, on known classes, while being sensitive to any number of unknown classes or class variations. When used for industrial inspection, L-DNN exploits its ability to learn with little and highly unbalanced data. L-DNN's real-time learning capability takes advantage of rare cases of poor-quality products that L-DNN encounters after deployment. L-DNN can be applied to industrial inspections and manufacturing quality control.