Simplified home appliance maintenance with failure detection e-AI solution

Renesas Electronics launched its Failure Detection e-AI Solution for motor-equipped home appliances and features the Renesas RX66T 32-bit MCU. This solution with e-AI allows detection of home appliance failures – such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines – due to motor abnormality. Property data noting the motor’s current or rotation rate status can be used directly for abnormality detection, making it able to achieve both motor control and e-AI–based abnormality detection with a single MCU. Using the device removes the requirement for extra sensors, thereby lessening a customer’s BOM cost. The new solution uses the Renesas Motor Control Evaluation System and an RX66T CPU card. This hardware is merged with a set of sample program files that run on the MCU as well as a GUI tool that allows collecting and analysing property data indicating motor states. To detect faults, it is essential to learn the characteristics of the normal state. Using the GUI tool, system engineers can instantly begin developing AI learning and optimised fault detection functionality. Once the AI models are developed, the e-AI development environment can be simply used to import the learned AI models into the RX66T. “Leveraging its extensive expertise in developing solutions for use in home appliances, Renesas has now developed a solution capable of detecting failures that affect the system based on detecting abnormal motor operation,” said Toru Moriya, vice president of Home Business Division, Industrial Solutions Business Unit, at Renesas. “Even in cases where a fault occurs in the motor itself, it can be difficult to localize the source to determine whether there is an abnormality in the motor or in the inverter circuit. The new solution makes it possible to identify the fault location quickly, which has the potential to dramatically decrease the maintenance burden for customers.”