Experimental Platform for Faults Detection in Fuzzy
Controllers based on Artificial Immune Systems
Robson Pacífico Guimarães Lima
Department of Electroeletronic
Federal Institute of Pernambuco, IFPE
Afogados da Ingazeira, Pernambuco, Brazil
robson.lima@afogados.ifpe.edu.br
Abstract— An Artificial-Immune-System (AIS) based
anomaly detection system applied to Water Supply System
(WSS) is presented. At normal working, the pressure level into
the WSS is controlled by a Fuzzy Control System. As the WSS is
composed of pressure sensors, valves, pumps, and other devices,
faults in these devices causing abnormal disturbances can occur.
An algorithm of AIS, namely, the Negative Selection Algorithm
(NSA), is the base of the proposed anomaly detection system. The
NSA verifies abnormal system conditions based on the normal
system conditions. Experimental results show that the proposed
system is effective in order to detect anomaly.
Keywords— Negative Selection Algorithm, Fuzzy Controller,
Fault Detection.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, fault monitoring and fault diagnosis of
industrial processes are becoming even more necessary due to
the crescent demand for quality, reliability and safety that
these processes have to achieve. A manufacturing breakdown
by an unexpected failure may put at risk staff safety, may
cause environmental impacts, may cause economical losses
and may result in high cost to repair damaged equipments [1].
In this way, early detection of faults industrial processes is
very crucial. Additionally, if it is done automatically then the
human factor in the detection process is dramatically reduced
and contributes to predictive maintenance.
On other context, a natural system that may be used as a
model for error detectors is the biological immune one which
is a complex system with several mechanisms for defense
against pathogenic organisms. The primary purpose of immune
systems is to recognize all cells within the body and categorize
those cells as body’s own cell (self) or foreign cell (nonself).
Such a recognition process is known as self-nonself
discrimination [2]. After discrimination, the nonself cells are
further categorized in order to induce an appropriate type of
defensive mechanism [3]. With the ability to detect nonself
cells, immune systems seem to be an adequate source of
inspiration to development of algorithms for early detection of
anomalous behavior in systems [4]. Artificial systems coming
from immune systems are called Artificial Immune Systems
Bruno Willian de Souza Arruda and Cleonilson
Protásio de Souza
Department of Electrical Engineering
Federal University of Paraíba, UFPB
João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil
{bruno.arruda}{protasio}@cear.ufpb.br
(AIS) and they are being considered one of the most promising
nature-inspired techniques used for novelty detection systems
[2]. One of the most important algorithms from AIS and the
main tool for self-nonself discrimination is the Negative
Selection Algorithm (NSA) for its great ability in early
detection of faults [2].
In this paper, it is presented an AIS-based anomaly
detection system applied to a Water Supply System (WSS)
controlled by a fuzzy system [4]. By injecting faults on
devices in this system (for example, pressure sensors, valves,
pumps, and other devices), the proposed anomaly detection
system, which is based on NSA, is able to detect abnormal
situations as shown in the experimental results.
II. CONTROL SYSTEM
A general scheme of a control system is shown in Fig. 1
which C(s) represent the controller, F(s) the actuator, G(s) the
process to be controlled and H(s) the structure associated with
sensor/instrumentation/signal transmission and y is the
controlled variable, r is the reference signal (setpoint), e is the
error, and u it the feedback variable. Each element in Fig. 1 is
subject to faults by material fatigue, wrong maintenance,
wrong specification, incorrect installation or operation and so
on.
Fig. 1. Control System.
A. Faults In Actuators
There are several devices that can be considered actuators in
industrial control systems: valves, motors, pumps, among
others. In this work, valves were assumed to be the target
actuator since they are the main actuators used in industry.
Valves are used to control flow and pressure and can present
a highly non-linear behavior due to stiction (in which the valve
acts only after the frictional force is overcome by the control Based on this process, Forrest et al. [7] proposed the
signal), backlash or dead band [1]. Another abnormal Negative-Selection Algorithm (NSA) for change detection. In
behavior considered is a very abrupt variation (normally, by general, this algorithm generates detectors randomly,
opening or closing operations) of the valve, modifying its linear eliminating the ones that detect self, so that the remaining
detectors can detect nonselves with high probability. The NSA
behavior. All these behaviors can cause a perturbation on the
is composed of three phases summarized as follows:
pressure signal measured in the Water Supply System. As a
result, abnormal pressure condition is the system signal that  Definition of the self data. In this phase, is defined as
will be monitored by the proposed detection system. self a data that need to be protected or monitored.
These data can be a collection of vectors R = {R1, …,
III. IMMUNE SYSTEM OVERVIEW Rn}, where Ri is a vector of length L with elements from
The nature of biological immune systems prevents humans a finite or infinite field. Each of these vectors is called
a self-vector.
from being infected by pathogens that cause diseases. Without
a functional immune system, even minor infections can be fatal.  Detector generation phase. Generate candidate
A typical immune system provides two kinds of defending detectors randomly and verify if they match any self-
functions, namely innate immunity and adaptive immunity. vector in R (according to a specified matching rule, see
The innate immunity is determined by the genes that a person below). If a match is found, the candidate is rejected.
inherits from her parents, whereas the adaptive immunity is Otherwise, it is accepted as detector. This process is
repeated until a desired number of detectors are
adaptively formed when some pathogens cannot be effectively
generated forming the set of detectors. This phase is
destroyed by the system’s innate immunity [5]. illustrated in Fig. 2.
There are two main types of mechanisms of defense: the
innate and the acquired (or adaptative). When the organism is  Monitoring phase. Monitor R for changes by
invaded by a strange agent, the innate system is the first one to continually matching the detectors against vectors of R
be operated and in many cases, this answer protects for you (here, susceptible of change). If any detector ever
only the organism. When the first step is insufficient, the matches, then a change occurred, because the detectors
adaptive system is operated. Since this action is more specific, are designed not to match any of the original vectors in
the answer becomes more efficient [6]. R, as illustrated in Fig. 3.
Humoral immunity, also known as antibody mediated
immunity, protects the body from bacterial infections using B-
cells to generate antibodies and helper T-cells to activate the
production of antibodies. Centralized learning occurs in the
thymus, the initial destination of immature T-cells that have
developed from stem cells in the bone marrow. The learning
process ensures that an immune response can only be initiated
against cells not belonging to the body. Self-cells or proteins
circulate through the thymus and are exposed to the immature
T-cells. If any binding or matching between receptors on a T-
cell and a self-cell occur then the immature T-cell is destroyed. Fig. 2. Detector generation phase.
This process is known as programmed cell death. The process
is essentially a negative selection. The matured T-cells are then
distributed throughout the body into lymph nodes by the
lymphatic system to take part in a distributed detection process
[6].
IV. NEGATIVE-SELECTION ALGORITHM
As described in previous section, the negative selection
process is carried out in order to mature T-cells for
recognizing pathogenic organisms (body’s non-self cells) and
not recognizing body’s self cells. During T-cell maturation,
receptors are made by a random genetic rearrangement
process which eliminates T-cells that react against self-
Fig. 3. Monitoring phase.
proteins. In this way, only T-cells that do not match any self-
protein are allowed to leave the Thymus [3]. These matured T-
cells then circulate throughout the body to perform A. Matching Rules
immunological functions to protect it against pathogenic In negative-selection algorithm, criterion of matching are
organisms [2]. necessary since a perfect match between two vectors of equal
length means that at each location in the vectors, the symbols
are identical. In this case, the matching is completely specific,
so a detector will match only a single self-vector. So that
detectors could match several vectors, i.e., to increase the
capability of detecting, a partial-matching rule is used [8].
Two main partial matching rules are the r-contiguous
matching rule and the r-hamming matching rule. Both the r-
contiguous matching rule and the r-hamming matching rule
are controlled by the threshold parameter r. The higher the
value of r, the more specific the match is. A consequence of
using a partial matching rule is that there is a tradeoff between
the value of r and the number of necessary detectors to detect
nonself vectors [8].
The r-contiguous matching rule was proposed by Forrest
et al. [7]. It consists in looking for r contiguous matches
between symbols in corresponding positions. Suppose that two
vectors x, which can be a self-vector, and y, which can be a
detector, so, for example, if x and y assume the values in Fig.
4, then x and y match for all r ≤ 5.
V. APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL IMMUNE SYSTEMS IN
WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM
In this section, it is shown a description of the experiments
carried out as well as the equipments and techniques that have
been used. In this work, a fuzzy system with the purpose of
controlling the pressure level in a pump based water supply
system is considered. This system, automatically, keeps the
water pressure level constant despite speed variations of the
water pump rotation. The pumps speed control is done through
estimating frequency inverters, controlled by a varied voltage
electric signal. This signal is provided by a computer through
an acquisition data board which changes according to the
characteristics of the system [9]. In this system, some faults
are introduced on the system control to check the acting of
proposed fault detection system and runs in the same computer
that the Fuzzy Control module runs. The experiments were
carried out in the system seen in Fig. 7.

x: 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1
y: 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
Fig. 4. A match under the r-contiguous matching rule, with vectors of
length L = 13 consisting of symbols from the binary alphabet with
the matching constraint r = 5. The vectors x and y in the above
example match for all r ≤ 5.

The r-hamming matching rule is based on Hamming

distance and consists in looking for r matches between
symbols in corresponding positions (not necessary
contiguous). An example based on r-hamming matching rule
is shown in Fig. 5, and x and y match for all r ≤ 9.
Fig 7. Water Supply System.
x: 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0
y: 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1
Fig. 5. The vectors x and y in the above example match for all r ≤ 9. A. Sampling pressure values
Initially, the experiment was conducted by activate the
Consider real values, the r-contiguous and the r-hamming water supply system from the rest in order to reach the
matching rules can be based on the parameter δ, called pressure setpoint of 25 mca controlled by the fussy system.
discrepancy. For example, suppose δ = 0.5 and the values of x The resulted curve of pressure is shown in Fig. 8.
and y shown in Fig. 6, the difference between correspondent
values of x and y that are smaller than δ are marked as 1 and
otherwise 0, forming the vector z. In this way,
 x and y match for all r ≤ 5 considering the r-contiguous
matching rule, and
 x and y match for all r ≤ 6 considering the r-
hamming matching rule.

x: 2.1 3.9 5.6 8.2 3.7 8.1 5.6 9.7 0.9 2.7 2.0 3.3 1.4
y: 4.5 1.2 3.2 2.6 3.4 7.8 5.6 9.8 1.1 5.6 7.6 2.9 7.6
z: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0

Fig. 6. Considering real values, x and y match for all r ≤ 5 considering
the r-contiguous matching rule, and x and y match if for all r ≤ 6
considering the r- hamming matching rule.
Fig. 8. Normal Pressure curve.
After its stabilization, the system was subjected to a
brusque increase and decrease of pressure through a closure
and opening of a valve. The curves of response can be seen in
Fig. 9.

Fig. 9. Faulty Pressure curve.
As can be seen in Fig. 9, the abnormal pressure conditions
occur between 250s and 324s and between 637s and 708s.
B. NSA
It was applied the NSA considering the following:
 Definition of the self data. Considering data from
Fig. 8, it was sampled 900 values of pressure that
form the self-data R. By windowing, the pressure
curve was split in n = 180 self-vectors {R1, …, Rn}
where Ri is a vector of length L=5, i.e., each
consecutive 5 sampled pressure values form a self-
vector.
 Detector generation phase. It was generate 100
detectors considering the r-hamming matching rule
and δ = 13 and r = 4.
 Monitoring phase. Considering the Faulty Pressure
curve (shown in Fig. 9), it was monitored the pressure
curve with the previous generated detectors.
C. Experimental Results
The experimental results that confirm the efficiency of the
NSA when applied in the water supply system is shown in Fig.
10, where the dotted line indicates the number of active
detectors (the number of matched detectors) for each nonself
vector considering the faulty pressure curve. As it can be
observed in the faulty intervals the number of active detectors
is high, otherwise zero.
Fig. 10. Number of active detectors.
Other experiment was carried out considering the normal
pressure curve (shown in Fig. 8). The results are shown in Fig.
11 and any detector was active as expected since detects do
not match self-vector.
Fig. 11. No active detectors considering normal pressure curve.
Considering r-contiguous matching rule, the experimental
results were similar.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
This work presented an application of Negative Selection
Algorithm in a fuzzy controlled water supply system. By
introducing faults on the system, the proposed detection
system was able to detect them as shown in the experimental
results.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the financial support
provided by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and
Technological Development (CNPq), and by Brazilian
Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education
Personel (CAPES).
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