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Industrial AI engineer
AI where the machines are: where it sits beside PLC and SCADA, predictive maintenance on real run-to-failure data, machine vision quality inspection with YOLO, and plant data over Modbus and OPC UA in Python.
Step 1AI and machine learningIntermediateAI for Industrial Automation
The hub of the industrial track: where AI actually sits beside PLC, SCADA, MES and the historian; which of the seven use cases pay and what data each needs; OPC UA, MQTT and the unified namespace; edge against cloud; predictive maintenance as a business case; vision, digital twins, copilots and agents; the vendor landscape; safety, security and governance — ending with a readiness audit of a real process.
- Place any AI proposal on the control hierarchy and say what the PLC keeps
- Match a plant problem to one of seven use cases and name the label it needs
- Get data to a model with OPC UA, MQTT and a unified namespace without loading the PLC
Step 2AI and machine learningIntermediatePredictive Maintenance with Machine Learning
The industrial AI application with a budget behind it, built end to end: failure modes and what each sensor sees, signals to condition indicators, anomaly detection on normal data, fault classification, deep learning on windows, remaining useful life on NASA's run-to-failure engines, and the alerting and deployment that decide whether anyone acts.
- Choose the sensor by the warning time you need, and name the failure mode from its spectrum
- Turn windows into condition indicators — kurtosis, band energies, envelope peaks — and rank them
- Build a per-asset anomaly detector on healthy data with a threshold and persistence that stop alert floods
Step 3AI and machine learningIntermediateMachine Vision and Quality Inspection
The whole inspection station, not just the model: cameras, lenses, lighting and triggers that make the image; classical tools for what can be measured; deep learning for what can only be shown; datasets and labelling; training, evaluating and exporting a YOLO defect detector; and deploying it beside a PLC that keeps the reject decision.
- Turn feature size, field of view and belt speed into pixels, exposure and a lens focal length
- Choose backlight, dark-field, dome or structured light by measured contrast, not opinion
- Build the timing budget to the rejector and the PLC handshake with a heartbeat
Step 4AI and machine learningIntermediateIndustrial Data with Python
The plumbing nobody teaches: values out of PLCs and meters over Modbus and OPC UA from Python, published over MQTT, stored as time series, cleaned and gridded, forecast and scored for anomalies, and wired to a dashboard — every stage built against a simulator on your own laptop, so no plant is needed and nothing you break matters.
- Read holding registers over Modbus TCP and RTU from Python and decode floats, offsets and scaling correctly
- Run an OPC UA server and client in Python, subscribe to changes and log value, quality and source timestamp
- Design MQTT topics and payloads and bridge OPC UA to a broker with retain and last will
How the path works
Join the path and every course is added to your account at once, each with its own progress, notes, quizzes and final. Take them in the order shown: each assumes the one before. Module quizzes are five plain questions and the final is ten, pass mark 40%, with unlimited retries, so the assessment checks that you followed the lessons rather than testing exam nerves.
Questions
- Is the Industrial AI engineer free?
- Yes. Every course in the path is free in full: lessons, notes, practice tasks and assessments. Joining the path adds all of them to your account in one step. The only paid item is the optional EDWartens Certificate of Completion for each course.
- In what order should I take the courses?
- In the order listed: each course assumes the one before it. Every course keeps its own progress, quizzes and certificate, so you can also take one on its own.
- Do I get one certificate for the whole path?
- Certificates are per course, issued when you pass that course's final assessment and bought only if you want them. Finishing every course in a path gives you one certificate per course.