• CN: 11-2187/TH
  • ISSN: 0577-6686

Journal of Mechanical Engineering ›› 2026, Vol. 62 ›› Issue (9): 1-13.doi: 10.3901/JME.260405

Previous Articles    

TCN-Transformer-based Automatic Anomaly Detection for Industrial Robots

JIANG Qincheng1, TAO Jianfeng1,2, WANG Shijie1, WANG Yangyang1, LIU Chengliang1,2   

  1. 1. School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240;
    2. State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240
  • Received:2025-10-08 Revised:2026-02-20 Published:2026-07-08

Abstract: To address the need for automated anomaly detection in industrial robot factory inspections, a novel industrial robot automatic anomaly detection method based on the TCN-Transformer model is proposed. The method designs a TCN-Transformer-based dynamic modeling approach for industrial robots, where real-time joint angles, angular velocities, and angular accelerations are input into the TCN-Transformer model to perform inverse dynamics. This generates adaptive real-time standard joint current signals, which are compared with the actual real-time current signals to measure similarity and enable adaptive anomaly detection. A cloud-edge collaborative industrial robot automatic anomaly detection system is built, enabling automatic information acquisition, real-time data collection, and automated anomaly detection for robots in the production testing area. Through multiple experimental scenarios, including multi-condition robot tests, joint anomaly injection experiments, and system stress testing, the proposed dynamic modeling method is shown to generate adaptive standard data with high accuracy. The anomaly detection method is able to locate faulty joints and maintain a high consistency with the severity of the anomaly. This system provides stable, accurate, and efficient automated anomaly detection for large-scale industrial robot clusters.

Key words: industrial robots, dynamics modeling, Transformer model, anomaly detection, cloud-edge collaboration

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