Fuzzy Logic with Engineering Applications, 4th Edition

12Applications of Fuzzy Systems Using Miscellaneous Models

Knowing ignorance is strength, and ignoring knowledge is sickness.

Lao Tsu, Chinese philosopher, Tao Te Ching, circa 600 B.C.

This chapter exposes the reader to a few of the additional application areas that have been extended with fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic. These few areas cannot cover the wealth of other applications, but they give to the reader an appreciation of the potential influence of fuzzy logic in almost any technology area. Addressed in this chapter are five additional application areas: optimization, fuzzy cognitive mapping, fuzzy agent‐based models, fuzzy arithmetic, and fuzzy data fusion. The chapter summary gives the reader some references for other applications.

Fuzzy Optimization

Most technical fields, including all those in engineering, involve some form of optimization that is required in the process of design. Because design is an open‐ended problem with many solutions, the quest is to find the “best” solution according to some criterion. In fact, almost any optimization process involves trade‐offs between costs and benefits because finding optimum solutions is analogous to creating designs; there can be many solutions, but only a few might be optimum, or useful, particularly where there is a generally nonlinear relationship between performance and cost. Optimization, in its most general form, involves finding the most optimum solution from a family of reasonable solutions according ...