---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - en
task_categories:
  - question-answering
  - time-series-forecasting
tags:
  - robotics
  - industrial
  - time-series
  - causal-reasoning
  - benchmark
  - machine-understanding
pretty_name: FactoryBench
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K
configs:
  - config_name: level_1
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_qa/level_1.jsonl
  - config_name: level_2
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_qa/level_2.jsonl
  - config_name: level_3
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_qa/level_3.jsonl
  - config_name: level_4
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_qa/level_4.jsonl
  - config_name: lite_level_1
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_lite/level_1.jsonl
  - config_name: lite_level_2
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_lite/level_2.jsonl
  - config_name: lite_level_3
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_lite/level_3.jsonl
  - config_name: lite_level_4
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: factorybench_lite/level_4.jsonl
---

# FactoryBench

FactoryBench is a benchmark for evaluating **machine-behavior reasoning** in time-series models and LLMs over industrial robotic telemetry. Question-answer pairs are organised along the four levels of Pearl's causal hierarchy:

| Level | Capability | Example |
|-------|-----------|---------|
| **L1 — State** | Identify the operational state from raw signals | "Which fault, if any, is occurring in this episode?" |
| **L2 — Intervention** | Predict the effect of an intervention | "How would the joint torques change if the payload were doubled?" |
| **L3 — Counterfactual** | Reason about alternative histories | "Would the collision still have occurred if the speed had been 50% lower?" |
| **L4 — Decision** | Engineering decision-making (troubleshooting + optimisation) | "Given this anomaly, what is the most likely root cause and remediation?" |

The benchmark is grounded in **FactoryWave**, a dense multivariate telemetry dataset collected from a UR3 collaborative robot (125 Hz) and a KUKA KR10 industrial arm (83 Hz), supplemented with the AURSAD and voraus-AD open-source datasets.

## Dataset summary

- **69,691 Q&A pairs** across four causal levels, released as a single undivided pool (the public release is not split into train/validation/test).
- **FactoryBench-Lite**: a balanced 3,000-item subset for cheap evaluation, even across templates and within each template on the dimension that determines its answer.
- **5 answer formats**: single-select MCQ, multi-select MCQ, ranking, tensor/numerical, free-form (judged by an LLM-as-judge voting protocol).
- **Telemetry from real industrial robots** with systematic fault injection (27 atomic mechanisms across pick-and-place, screwing, and peg-in-hole tasks).

## Repository layout

```
FactoryBench/
├── factorybench_qa/                 # Question-answer pairs (full pool)
│   ├── level_1.jsonl
│   ├── level_2.jsonl
│   ├── level_3.jsonl
│   └── level_4.jsonl
├── factorybench_lite/               # Balanced 3,000-item evaluation subset
│   ├── level_1.jsonl
│   ├── level_2.jsonl
│   ├── level_3.jsonl
│   └── level_4.jsonl
├── knowledge_graph/                 # Combined knowledge graph
│   ├── knowledge_graph.json         # Machines, grippers, tasks, events, faults, anomalies, error→protocol map, relevance specs
│   └── SCHEMA.md                    # Field-level schema documentation
└── factorywave/                     # Underlying telemetry & metadata
    ├── episodes.parquet             # Episode-level metadata (9,728 episodes)
    ├── flow.parquet                 # Task flow definitions
    ├── kuka_signals.parquet         # KUKA KR10 signals (~83 Hz, 1,428 episodes)
    ├── ur_signals.parquet           # UR3 signals (~125 Hz, 3,076 episodes)
    ├── ur_signals_10hz.parquet      # UR3 signals (10 Hz, 3,984 episodes — disjoint from ur_signals)
    └── ur_screwdriver_signals.parquet  # UR3 screwdriver subset (~125 Hz, 1,240 episodes)
```

> **Note on UR coverage.** `ur_signals.parquet` (~125 Hz) and `ur_signals_10hz.parquet` (10 Hz) cover **disjoint** UR3 episode subsets — no episode appears in both files. Together they span 7,060 distinct UR3 episodes; `ur_screwdriver_signals.parquet` adds another 1,240 screwdriver-task episodes. Each row in `episodes.parquet` corresponds to exactly one signal table.

## Knowledge graph

`knowledge_graph/knowledge_graph.json` is the structured "world model" that grounds FactoryBench Q&A items: machine and gripper capability tables, the task/event vocabulary, the fault root-cause catalogue, the observable-anomaly catalogue, the error→protocol mapping used to derive ground-truth answers for L4 troubleshooting items, an anomaly severity ranking, and the relevance specs that drive fault-aware sub-series sampling. See [`knowledge_graph/SCHEMA.md`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/FactoryBench/FactoryBench/blob/main/knowledge_graph/SCHEMA.md) for field-level documentation.

```python
import json, urllib.request
url = "https://huggingface.co/datasets/FactoryBench/FactoryBench/resolve/main/knowledge_graph/knowledge_graph.json"
kg = json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen(url).read())

# Machine spec lookup
machines_by_id = {m["machine_id"]: m for m in kg["machines"]}

# Error → operator protocol (the ground truth for L4 troubleshooting answers)
protocol_for = {e["root_cause"]: e["ur3_protocol"] for e in kg["root_cause_error_mapping"]}
print(protocol_for["collision_rigid_object"])
```

## Q&A pair counts

| Level | Full pool | Lite  |
|-------|-----------|-------|
| L1    | 15,321    | 572   |
| L2    | 40,226    | 1,430 |
| L3    | 2,939     | 712   |
| L4    | 11,205    | 286   |
| **Total** | **69,691** | **3,000** |

The public release is a single undivided pool per level. The `train` split name
in the config block is the Hugging Face default for a single-file config, not a
semantic split. A private 15% slice is held back for contamination checks and is
not counted here.

## Q&A fields

Each line in `factorybench_qa/level_*.jsonl` (and `factorybench_lite/level_*.jsonl`) is a single Q&A item:

| Field | Description |
|-------|-------------|
| `id` | Unique item identifier |
| `level` | Causal level (1–4) |
| `template_id` | Question template the item was generated from |
| `template_type` | Answer format (`single_choice`, `multi_choice`, `ranking`, `tensor`, `free_form`) |
| `hides` | Channels/fields hidden from the model in this item |
| `question` | Natural-language question |
| `options` | Answer options (for MCQ/ranking templates) |
| `answer` | Ground-truth answer |
| `root_cause` | Underlying fault/cause (Level 4 only) |
| `acceptance_bounds` | Tolerance for numerical answers |
| `provenance` | Source episode(s) and channels used to derive the item |
| `context` | Time-series and metadata context exposed to the model |

## Loading the data

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load one level of the full pool
ds = load_dataset("FactoryBench/FactoryBench", "level_1", split="train")

# Load one level of the balanced Lite subset
lite = load_dataset("FactoryBench/FactoryBench", "lite_level_1", split="train")

# Or address a file directly
ds = load_dataset(
    "FactoryBench/FactoryBench",
    data_files="factorybench_qa/level_1.jsonl",
    split="train",
)

# Load underlying telemetry
import pandas as pd
root = "hf://datasets/FactoryBench/FactoryBench/factorywave"
episodes = pd.read_parquet(f"{root}/episodes.parquet")
ur_125 = pd.read_parquet(f"{root}/ur_signals.parquet")
ur_10  = pd.read_parquet(f"{root}/ur_signals_10hz.parquet")  # different episodes
kuka   = pd.read_parquet(f"{root}/kuka_signals.parquet")
screw  = pd.read_parquet(f"{root}/ur_screwdriver_signals.parquet")

# Load the combined knowledge graph (machines, faults, error→protocol, ...)
import json, urllib.request
kg = json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen(
    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/FactoryBench/FactoryBench/resolve/main/knowledge_graph/knowledge_graph.json"
).read())
```

## Citation

If you use FactoryBench, please cite the dataset and the two upstream open-source datasets it incorporates (AURSAD and voraus-AD):

```bibtex
@misc{anonymous2026factorybench,
  title  = {FactoryBench: Evaluating Industrial Machine Understanding},
  author = {Anonymous},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Submission under double-blind review}
}

@article{leporowski2022aursad,
  title   = {{AURSAD}: Universal Robot Screwdriving Anomaly Detection Dataset},
  author  = {Leporowski, B{\l}a{\.z}ej and Tola, Daniella and Hansen, Christian and Iosifidis, Alexandros},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.03211},
  year    = {2022}
}

@misc{brockmann2024vorausad,
  title         = {voraus-{AD}: A New Dataset for Anomaly Detection in Robot Applications},
  author        = {Brockmann, Jan Thie{\ss} and Rudolph, Marco and Rosenhahn, Bodo and Wandt, Bastian},
  year          = {2024},
  eprint        = {2311.04153},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.RO}
}
```

## Intended use & limitations

**Intended use.** Benchmark evaluation of LLMs and time-series models on structured industrial Q&A reasoning tasks (state, intervention, counterfactual, decision-making).

**Limitations.** Domain-specific to factory and industrial robotic scenarios; may not generalise to open-domain Q&A. Faults are atomic and drawn from a closed catalogue of 27 physically injected mechanisms — different from compound or gradual real-world faults. The dataset shows a size imbalance between Levels 2 and 3.

**Out-of-scope.** Not intended for deployment in safety-critical, medical, legal, or financial decision systems without further validation by domain experts.

## License

Released under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license. You may share and adapt the dataset for any purpose, including commercial, with appropriate attribution to the FactoryBench authors. The accompanying generator source code, evaluation scripts, LLM-as-judge prompts, and tooling (linked from the paper) are released separately under the MIT License.