Dynamic determination of sampling rates

• US 7,647,131 B1
• Filed: 03/09/2006
• Issued: 01/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: Miller, Scott A., Sturrock, David T., Sadowski, Randall P., Campbell, John T. Jr., Glavach, Mark A., Overstreet, Keith A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Rodriguez; Paul L
• Assistant Examiner(s): RAO, SHEELA S
• Application Number:
  US11/371,764
• Time in Patent Office: 1,405 Days
• Field of Search: 700/46, 700/108, 318/636, 702/83, 702/178, 702/181, 702/182, 702/185
• US Class Current: 700/108
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0297 Reconfiguration of monitoring system, e.g. use of virtual sensors; change monitoring method as a response to monitoring results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/82 Protecting input, output or interconnection devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2101 Auditing as a secondary aspect

Abstract

A system that facilitates determination of a sampling rate to utilize in connection with sampling data in an industrial environment comprises a receiver component that receives data from an I/O port of a controller. An analysis component automatically and dynamically determines a rate at which data associated with the I/O port is to be sampled based at least in part upon the received data. The system can further comprise a sampling component that samples data at the rate determined by the analysis component.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates determination of a sampling rate to utilize in connection with sampling data in an industrial environment, comprising:

one or more data repositories comprising historical data associated with at least one of industrial machines or industrial processes;

a receiver component that receives data from one or more I/O ports of a controller; and

an analysis component that employs probabilistic analysis to correlate the historical data to the received data to predict a failure of the at least one of industrial machines or industrial processes, the analysis component automatically determines a rate at which data associated with the one or more I/O ports is to be sampled based at least in part upon the predicted failure.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a sampling component that samples data at the rate determined by the analysis component.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the analysis component further determines to initiate sampling from a particular sensor based upon the predicted failure.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the controller comprises the sampling component or the sampling component is coupled to a backplane that is associated with the controller.

5. The system of claim 2, further comprising a logging component that directs data sampled by the sampling component to the one or more data repositories.

6. The system of claim 2, further comprising a simulation engine, data sampled by the sampling component is provided to the simulation engine to update the simulation engine, the simulation engine utilizes one or more of a digital video, a still photo, or a generated three-dimensional simulation.

7. The system of claim 2, further comprising:

a data mining component that performs data mining on the historical data within the data repository to locate correlations between the historical data, determine patterns within the historical data, or determine trends within the historical data; and

the analysis component determines the sampling rate based at least in part upon results of the data mining.

8. The system of claim 2, the analysis component and the controller are coupled to a backplane.

9. The system of claim 2, further comprising:

an audit component that receives input from a user identifying a specific industrial process to audit and accesses the data repository to generate an audit log in accordance with the user input.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a security component that authenticates an identity of the user and determines whether the user is authorized to manually alter the sampling rate.

11. The system of claim 10, the controller comprises the security component.

12. The system of claim 2, the controller comprises the analysis component.

13. The system of claim 2, further comprising multiple sampling components associated with multiple controllers, wherein the multiple sampling components sample data at different sampling rates associated with different I/O ports of the multiple controllers.

14. The system of claim 2, the analysis component automatically determines rates at which data associated with multiple I/O ports of a plurality of controllers is sampled based at least in part upon data received from the multiple I/O ports.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising an aggregation component that automatically aggregates and indexes data sampled from the plurality of controllers.

16. The system of claim 15, the aggregation component facilitates aggregation of data sampled from the plurality of controllers through a hierarchical arrangement of data repositories.

17. The system of claim 2, further comprising a monitoring component that is coupled to a backplane that is associated with the controller, the monitoring component monitors I/O ports associated with the controller and relays results of the monitoring to the analysis component, the analysis component analyzes the results and automatically determines which data should be retained and which data should be discarded.

18. A methodology for automatically and dynamically determining a sampling rate, comprising:

controlling one or more industrial processes with a plurality of controllers;

logging historical data associated with the one or more industrial processes;

configuring a hardware device to monitor a plurality of I/O ports, the plurality of I/O ports are associated with the plurality of controllers;

receiving data from monitoring the I/O ports;

predicting a failure of the one or more industrial processes based upon identifying a pattern associated with the received data and historical data; and

automatically determining one or more rates at which to sample data associated with the plurality of I/O ports based at least in part upon the predicted failure of the one or more industrial processes.

19. The methodology of claim 18, configuring the hardware device to monitor the plurality of I/O ports comprises coupling the hardware device to a backplane that is associated with the plurality of controllers.

20. The methodology of claim 18, further comprising:

performing data mining on the historical data to at least one of locate correlations between the historical data, determine patterns within the historical data, or determine trends within the historical data; and

automatically determining rates at which to sample the data associated with the plurality of I/O ports based at least in part upon results of the data mining.

21. The methodology of claim 18, further comprising automatically aggregating sampled data from the plurality of I/O ports.

22. The methodology of claim 21, further comprising automatically indexing the aggregated data.

23. The methodology of claim 18, further comprising automatically selecting a subset of the I/O ports with respect to which data is sampled based at least in part upon the monitoring.

24. The methodology of claim 18, the sampled data conforms to a hierarchically structured data model.

25. The methodology of claim 24, the hierarchically structured data model is based at least in part upon one or more of ISA S88 and ISA S95.

26. The methodology of claim 18, further comprising generating an audit log with the sampled data.

27. An industrial data sampling system, comprising:

a data mining component that performs data mining on data from an I/O card of a controller and historical data associated with the controller, and employs computational techniques based on one or more of statistics, machine learning, or pattern recognition to identify a pattern, a trend, or a correlation predicative of at least one of a device failure associated with the controller or a process failure associated with the controller;

an analysis component that analyzes data and determines selects a sampling rate to sample data associated with the I/O card based at least in part upon the predicted device failure or process failure; and

a sampling component communicatively coupled to the analysis component that samples data associated with the I/O card at the selected sampling rate.

28. A system that facilitates dynamic alteration of sampling rates associated with multiple controllers, comprising:

means for analyzing data associated with an I/O card of a controller, wherein the controller controls at least one of an industrial device or an industrial process;

means for predicating a failure of at least one of the industrial device or the industrial process based upon the analysis;

means for identifying a sampling rate at which to sample data associated with the I/O card based at least in part upon the predicted failure; and

means for effectuating the sampling rate with respect to the I/O card.