Edge Processing

Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance systems include a several smart sensor nodes in the equipment, which are directly connected to the cloud directly or connected via intermediate gateways. Computation is performed inside the smart sensor or on the local microprocessor, either in gateways or in the cloud, depending on the expected latency and on how far the raw data and processed data are sent over connectivity. Edge processing occurs when the computation of data is carried out directly in the smart sensor node or at the gateway, in order to save power consumption and ensure data is kept confidential, allowing companies to analyze critical information at the node level and to reduce anomaly detection time.


Combining edge and cloud computing technologies could help tpo develop predictive maintenance techniques and enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. Indeed, working on data at the edge, close to the sensor, allows companies to detect machine deterioration at the node level and to take immediate and informed corrective actions, thus preventing further damage and machine failures. Long-term analysis and actions to determine trends and optimize local analysis models can be managed on the cloud, enabling more complex analytics on large amounts of pre-processed data coming from multiple nodes.