The electronic head: a virtual quality instrument

We describe a new approach to virtual instrumentation, estimation and decision making of a dynamically changing quality assessment. We illustrate this approach in an electronic head concept, in which we combine the amount of information received, and apply feature extraction analysis and a fuzzy clustering technique to assess the quality as acquired from a human expert. By combining data from different artificial sensor systems into a single set of meaningful features, we obtain information that is of greater human benefit than the aggregate of its contributing sensors. The combination of sensor data by fuzzy clusters has the aim of performing inference that may be impossible from the single artificial sensors. The entire sensor system acts as a virtual instrument for dynamic industrial process monitoring. This virtual instrument allows easy sensor observation and learning interaction with a human operator.