Method and apparatus to automatically create virtual sensors with templates

• US 8,812,261 B2
• Filed: 02/12/2008
• Issued: 08/19/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Applied Materials Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Applied Materials Incorporated
• Inventors: Kroupnova, Natalia, Yanovich, Aleksey, Kril, Thorsten, Kozine, Mikhail B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Teixeira Moffat, Jonathan C
• Assistant Examiner(s): BETSCH, REGIS J
• Application Number:
  US12/069,875
• Publication Number:
  US 20090055692A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,380 Days
• Field of Search: 702/116, 702/123, 702/182, 706/13, 706/59
• US Class Current: 702/182
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/41875 characterised by quality surveillance of production
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/00 Testing or monitoring of control systems or parts thereof monitoring of programme-control systems G05B19/048, G05B19/406
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/021 adopting a different treatment of each operating region or a different mode of the monitored system, e.g. transient modes; different operating configurations of monitored system
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0221 Preprocessing measurements, e.g. data collection rate adjustment; Standardization of measurements; Time series or signal analysis, e.g. frequency analysis or wavelets; Trustworthiness of measurements; Indexes therefor; Measurements using easily measured parameters to estimate parameters difficult to measure; Virtual sensor creation; De-noising; Sensor fusion; Unconventional preprocessing inherently present in specific fault detection methods like PCA-based methods
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0254 based on a quantitative model, e.g. mathematical relationships between inputs and outputs; functions: observer, Kalman filter, residual calculation, Neural Networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/02 Total factory control, e.g. smart factories, flexible manufacturing systems [FMS] or integrated manufacturing systems [IMS]

Abstract

A method and apparatus for automatically providing a virtual sensor have been described. In one embodiment, a method for automatically providing a virtual sensor includes receiving a plurality of virtual sensor templates from a server. The method further includes selecting a virtual sensor template from the plurality of virtual sensor templates. The selected virtual sensor template has an algorithm to provide a desired functionality. The method further includes selecting at least one parameter to configure the selected virtual sensor template. The method further includes automatically creating a virtual sensor associated with the selected virtual sensor template.

Claims

1. A method to automatically provide a virtual sensor in real-time, comprising:

providing a plurality of virtual sensor templates to a display on a computer system, the plurality of virtual sensor templates include different types of data tags and associated parameters of process recipes;

selecting, based on user input received with the computer system, one or more virtual sensor templates from a plurality of virtual sensor templates, each virtual sensor template including the one or more selected virtual sensor templates having an algorithm to provide a desired functionality including at least one of fault detection, error detection, and process monitoring in real-time during data collection for semiconductor manufacturing;

selecting, with the computer system, at least one parameter to configure the one or more selected virtual sensor templates; and

automatically creating a first virtual sensor configured from the one or more selected virtual sensor templates.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending the first virtual sensor to the server, wherein each virtual sensor template to define a format of a virtual sensor based on an extensible markup language (xml).

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

automatically updating a list of virtual sensors having at least one virtual sensor that is associated with one or more manufacturing machines by adding the first virtual sensor to the list of virtual sensors;

automatically collecting data associated with the first virtual sensor; and

automatically executing the first virtual sensor associated with the selected virtual sensor template in real-time based on the algorithm performing calculations on the collected data to generate an output of the first virtual sensor with the output being used by at least one data analysis module in real-time.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

acquiring the collected data from at least one of an external physical sensor associated with a machine tool, a second virtual sensor, a database, the machine tool, and a real sensor attached to the machine tool.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

analyzing the output of the first virtual sensor in real-time;

generating an error notification in real-time based on the at least one data analysis module analyzing the output of the first virtual sensor in real-time; and

stopping a machine tool that is associated with the first virtual sensor if the data analysis module determines a fault condition.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting at least one parameter to configure the one or more selected virtual sensor templates further comprises:

selecting at least one data tag associated with a data source; and

selecting values of at least one parameter associated with the selected virtual sensor template.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein selecting the at least one data tag comprises filtering a list of data tags by at least one of location, kind, collection plan, and chart plan.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising adding the at least one selected data tag to the one or more selected virtual sensor templates.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

adding a new virtual sensor template to a directory having the plurality of virtual sensor templates in real-time.

10. A non-transitory machine-accessible medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform a method comprising:

providing a plurality of virtual sensor templates to a display on a computer system, the plurality of virtual sensor templates include different types of data tags and associated parameters of process recipes;

selecting, based on user input, one or more selected virtual sensor templates from a plurality of virtual sensor templates, each virtual sensor template including the one or more selected virtual sensor templates having an algorithm to provide a desired functionality including at least one of fault detection, error detection, and process monitoring in real-time during data collection for semiconductor manufacturing;

selecting, with the computer system, at least one parameter to configure the one or more selected virtual sensor templates; and

automatically creating a first virtual sensor configured from the one or more selected virtual sensor templates.

11. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 10, further comprising:

sending the first virtual sensor to the server, wherein each virtual sensor template to define a format of a virtual sensor based on an extensible markup language (xml).

12. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 10, the method further comprising:

automatically updating a list of virtual sensors having at least one virtual sensor that is associated with one or more manufacturing machines by adding the first virtual sensor to the list of virtual sensors;

automatically collecting data associated with the first virtual sensor; and

automatically executing the first virtual sensor associated with the one or more selected virtual sensor templates in real-time based on the algorithm performing calculations on the collected data to generate an output of the first virtual sensor with the output being used by at least one data analysis module in real-time.

13. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 12, the method further comprising:

acquiring the collected data from at least one of an external physical sensor associated with a machine tool, a second virtual sensor, a database, the machine tool, and a real sensor attached to the machine tool.

14. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 10, wherein selecting at least one parameter associated with the one or more selected virtual sensor templates further comprises:

selecting at least one data tag associated a data source; and

selecting values of at least one parameter associated with the one or more selected virtual sensor templates.

15. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 14, wherein selecting the at least one data tag occurs by filtering a list of data tags by at least one of location, kind, collection plan, and chart plan.

16. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 15, the method further comprising adding the at least one selected data tag to the one or more selected virtual sensor templates.

17. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 10, the method further comprising:

analyzing an output of the first virtual sensor in real-time;

generating an error notification in real-time based on a data analysis module analyzing the output of the first virtual sensor in real-time; and

stopping a machine tool that is associated with the first virtual sensor if the data analysis module determines a fault condition.

18. The non-transitory machine-accessible medium of claim 10, the method further comprising:

adding a new virtual sensor template to a directory having the plurality of virtual sensor templates in real-time in order to create one or more new virtual sensors in real-time based on the new virtual sensor template.