A lightweight sensor ontology for supporting sensor selection, deployment, and data processing in forming processes

In the era of smart manufacturing, modern manufacturing systems face high demands for enhancing process performance and reducing machine downtime. Sensors and process data are essential for successfully implementing data-driven approaches to guarantee robust and reliable process monitoring, tool conditioning, or quality assurance. However, the accuracy and performance of such approaches are highly dependent on the quality of the gathered sensor data and influenced by the implemented data acquisition and processing methods. For this purpose, this work proposes a lightweight sensor ontology to provide a comprehensive overview to characterize underlying relationships between the physical environment and the quality of the data sets. The extended sensor ontology, in combination with domain knowledge, aims to support engineers in fully exploiting the potential of sensor data to obtain trustworthy data sets in forming technologies. As a result, this approach can improve the implementation of automated and data-driven process monitoring of forming systems and tools.