Fuzzy Logic Control in the Packaging Industry
Marcello Braglia, Marco Frosolini · Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology · 2010
Abstract Conventional controllers for the packaging industry are often based upon look‐up tables, where past experiences help practitioners to establish the expected outcomes, corresponding to several combinations of inputs, or on the adoption of Proportional, Integrative and Derivative controllers (PIDs), that are widely used due to their intrinsic robustness in a wide variety of operating conditions. The first method grants fast and readily available responses, but, at the same time, requires great amounts of computational resources, whereas PIDs are difficult to set up and necessitate continuous adjustments. In both cases the controlled systems are rather unstable and show unpredictable behavior, mainly due to numerous and random disturbances this results, making the control unable to deal with sudden changes. In the last decades Fuzzy Logic (FL) have emerged as a way to help overcome most of the disadvantages of the traditional control techniques. This aspect has been further improved by researchers with the aid of some well known Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), and with the adoption of computer‐aided simulation tools, that provide significant help during the set up and fine tuning of the controller. Recent literature is now available that deals with the adoption of FL hybrid controllers for packaging processes, addressing their particular aspects, and presenting noteworthy results and practical implications. Whereas some good theoretical applications of the Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLCs) to packaging processes are available, there is still a noticeable lack of real‐world implementations, mainly due to the great number of variables that may govern the processes themselves and that require long and complex tweaking stages. The present work presents a comprehensive review of the most interesting theoretical and practical implementations of the FLCs to the packaging processes, with the aim of pinpointing the strengths and the weaknesses of each proposal and giving a clear and up‐to‐date report of the state of the art.