Patent ID: 7142990

Claim:
A fault detection system for detecting faults in a plurality of machines, the system comprising: a plurality of sensors for detecting parameters from the machines and producing parameter signals corresponding to the detected parameters; a plurality of local processors, each local processor associated with a subset of the machines and a corresponding subset of the sensors, each local processor receiving the parameter signals from the subset of sensors with which the local processor is associated, each local processor programmed with a plurality of inference rules that define a logic operation to be performed on one or more of the parameter signals to detect a fault in at least one of the machines with which the local processor is associated, and each local processor programmed to perform the logic operation on the one or more parameter signals as defined by the inference rules to detect faults in at least one of the machines with which the local processor is associated; a system processor in communication with the plurality of local processors; and each local processor programmed to transmit to the system processor fault information indicating at least whether a fault has been detected in at least one of the machines with which the local processor is associated, whereby the system processor may receive the fault information.