Measuring activity / usage is one thing but as they get more advanced it would be exciting to explore detecting machine part failures as well.
As a child my father would relate how his father's time as a mechanic in WWI left him with the skill to listen to a passing car and say what was wrong or wearing out with particular parts of the engine.
Using ML to crack that and we'll have the good part of HAL from 2001 (although in the film the item turned out not to be faulty if I recall correctly!)
I don't have specific examples but I have read of standard manufacturer tools to do audio analysis of diesel engines to diagnose which part(s) are failing. AFAIK this has been a standard type of diagnostic for decades, although perhaps not as widespread or cheap to do as it is presently.
As a child my father would relate how his father's time as a mechanic in WWI left him with the skill to listen to a passing car and say what was wrong or wearing out with particular parts of the engine.
Using ML to crack that and we'll have the good part of HAL from 2001 (although in the film the item turned out not to be faulty if I recall correctly!)