Fuzzy controllers and fuzzy expert systems: industrial applications of fuzzy technology
Piero P. Bonissone · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
We will provide a brief description of the field of approximate reasoning systems, with a particular emphasis on the development of fuzzy logic control (FLC). FLC technology has drastically reduced the development time and deployment cost for the synthesis of nonlinear controllers for dynamic systems. As a result we have experienced an increased number of FLC applications. In a recently published paper we have illustrated some of our efforts in FLC technology transfer, covering projects in turboshaft aircraft engine control, stream turbine startup, steam turbine cycling optimization, resonant converter power supply control, and data-induced modeling of the nonlinear relationship between process variable in a rolling mill stand. These applications will be illustrated in the oral presentation. In this paper, we will compare these applications in a cost/complexity framework, and examine the driving factors that led to the use of FLCs in each application. We will emphasize the role of fuzzy logic in developing supervisory controllers and in maintaining explicit the tradeoff criteria used to manage multiple control strategies. Finally, we will describe some of our FLC technology research efforts in automatic rule base tuning and generation, leading to a suite of programs for reinforcement learning, supervised learning, genetic algorithms, steepest descent algorithms, and rule clustering.