In this paper, we propose a novel weighted combination feature selection method using bootstrap and fuzzy sets. The proposed method mainly consists of three processes, including fuzzy sets generation using bootstrap, weighted combination of fuzzy sets and feature ranking based on defuzzification. We implemented the proposed method by combining four state-of-the-art feature selection methods and evaluated the performance based on three publicly available biomedical datasets using five-fold cross validation. Based on the feature selection results, our proposed method produced comparable (if not better) classification accuracies to the best of the individual feature selection methods for all evaluated datasets. More importantly, we also applied standard deviation and Pearson's correlation to measure the stability of the methods. Remarkably, our combination method achieved significantly higher stability than the four individual methods when variations and size reductions were introduced to the datasets.

Solar activity It is vital to accurately predict solar activity, in order to decrease the plausible damage of electronic equipment in the event of a large high-intensity solar eruption. Recently, we have proposed BELFIS (Brain Emotional Learning-based Fuzzy Inference System) as a tool for the forecasting of chaotic systems. The structure of BELFIS is designed based on the neural structure of fear conditioning. The function of BELFIS is implemented by assigning adaptive networks to the components of the BELFIS structure. This paper especially focuses on performance evaluation of BELFIS as a predictor by forecasting solar cycles 16 to 24. The performance of BELFIS is compared with other computational models used for this purpose, and in particular with adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS).

A Building Automation System (BAS) has functions of monitoring and controlling the operation of all building sub-systems such as HVAC (Heating-Ventilation, Air-conditioning Control), electric consumption management, fire alarm control, security and access control, and appliance switching control. In the BAS, almost operations are automatically performed at the control centre, the building security therefore must be strictly protected. In the traditional system, the security is usually ensured by a number of cameras installed at fixed positions and it may results in a limited vision. To overcome this disadvantage, our paper presents a novel security system in which a mobile robot is used as a patrol. The robot is equipped with fuzzy-based algorithms to allow it to avoid the obstacles in an unknown environment as well as other necessary mechanisms demanded for its patrol mission. The experiment results show that the system satisfies the requirements for the objective of monitoring and securing the building.

Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are nature-inspired, swarm-based optimization algorithms respectively. Though they have been widely used for single-objective optimization since their inception, they suffer from premature convergence. Even though the hybrids of GSA and PSO perform much better, the problem remains. Hence, to solve this issue we have proposed a fuzzy mutation model for two hybrid versions of PSO and GSA - Gravitational Particle Swarm (GPS) and PSOGSA. The developed algorithms are called Mutation based GPS (MGPS) and Mutation based PSOGSA (MPSOGSA). The mutation operator is based on a fuzzy model where the probability of mutation has been calculated based on the closeness of particle to population centroid and improvement in the particle value. We have evaluated these two new algorithms on 23 benchmark functions of three categories (unimodal, multi-modal and multi-modal with fixed dimension). The experimental outcome shows that our proposed model outperforms their corresponding ancestors, MGPS outperforms GPS 13 out of 23 times (56.52%) and MPSOGSA outperforms PSOGSA 17 times out of 23 (73.91 %). We have also compared our results against those of recent optimization algorithms such as Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA), Opposition-Based SCA, and Volleyball Premier League Algorithm (VPL). In addition, we have applied our proposed algorithms on some classic engineering design problems and the outcomes are satisfactory. The related codes of the proposed algorithms can be found in this link: Fuzzy-Mutation-Embedded-Hybrids-of-GSA-and-PSO.

Fuzzy rule-based model is a powerful tool for imitating the human way of thinking and solving uncertainty-related problems as it allows for understandable and interpretable rule bases. The objective of this paper is to study the applicability of fuzzy rule-based modelling to quantify soil classification for engineering purposes by qualitatively considering soil index properties. The classification system of the Highway Research Board is considered to illustrate a fuzzy rule-based model. The soil's index properties are fuzzified using triangular functions, and the fuzzy membership values are calculated. Fuzzy arithmetical operators are then applied to the membership values obtained for classification. Fuzzy decision tree classification algorithm is used to derive fuzzy if-then rules to quantify qualitative soil classification. The proposed system is implemented in MATLAB. The results obtained are checked and the implementation of the proposed model is measured against the outcomes of the laboratory tests.

In this paper, the fuzzy multi-objective reliability redundancy allocation problem (FMORRAP) is proposed, which maximizes the system reliability while simultaneously minimizing the system cost under the type 2 fuzzy uncertainty. In the proposed formulation, the higher order uncertainties (such as parametric, manufacturing, environmental, and designers uncertainty) associated with the system are modeled with interval type 2 fuzzy sets (IT2 FS). The footprint of uncertainty of the interval type 2 membership functions (IT2 MFs) accommodates these uncertainties by capturing the multiple opinions from several system experts. We consider IT2 MFs to represent the subsystem reliability and cost, which are to be further aggregated using extension principle to evaluate the total system reliability and cost according to their configurations, i.e., series parallel and parallel series. We proposed a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based novel solution approach to solve the FMORRAP. To demonstrate the applicability of two formulations, namely, series parallel FMORRAP and parallel series FMORRAP, we performed experimental simulations on various numerical data sets. The decision makers/system experts assign different importance to the objectives (system reliability and cost), and these preferences are represented by sets of weights. The optimal results are obtained from our solution approach, and the Pareto optimal front is established using these different weight sets. The genetic algorithm (GA) was implemented to compare the results obtained from our proposed solution approach. A statistical analysis was conducted between PSO and GA, and it was found that the PSO based Pareto solution outperforms the GA.

In the framework of Granular Computing (GC), Interval type 2 Fuzzy Sets (IT2 FSs) play a prominent role by facilitating a better representation of uncertain linguistic information. Perceptual Computing (Per C), a well known computing with words (CWW) approach, and its various applications have nicely exploited this advantage. This paper reports a novel Per C based approach for student strategy evaluation. Examinations are generally oriented to test the subject knowledge of students. The number of questions that they are able to solve accurately judges success rates of students in the examinations. However, we feel that not only the solutions of questions, but also the strategy adopted for finding those solutions are equally important. More marks should be awarded to a student, who solves a question with a better strategy compared to a student, whose strategy is relatively not that good. Furthermore, the students strategy can be taken as a measure of his or her learning outcome as perceived by a faculty member. This can help to identify students, whose learning outcomes are not good, and, thus, can be provided with any relevant help, for improvement. The main contribution of this paper is to illustrate the use of CWW for student strategy evaluation and present a comparison of the recommendations generated by different CWW approaches. CWW provides us with two major advantages. First, it generates a numeric score for the overall evaluation of strategy adopted by a student in the examination. This enables comparison and ranking of the students based on their performances. Second, a linguistic evaluation describing the student strategy is also obtained from the system. Both these numeric score and linguistic recommendation are together used to assess the quality of a students strategy. We found that Per-C generates unique recommendations in all cases and outperforms other CWW approaches.

In the era of Industry 4.0, the focus is on the minimization of human element and maximizing the automation in almost all the industrial and manufacturing establishments. These establishments contain numerous processing systems, which can execute a number of tasks, in parallel with minimum number of human beings. This parallel execution of tasks is done in accordance to a scheduling policy. However, the minimization of human element beyond a certain point is difficult. In fact, the expertise and experience of a group of humans, called the experts, becomes imminent to design a fruitful scheduling policy. The aim of the scheduling policy is to achieve the optimal value of an objective, like production time, cost, etc. In real-life situations, there are more often than not, multiple objectives in any parallel processing scenario. Furthermore, the experts generally provide their opinions, about various scheduling criteria (pertaining to the scheduling policies) in linguistic terms or words. Word semantics are best modeled using fuzzy sets (FSs). Thus, all these factors have motivated us to model the parallel processing scenario as a multi-objective linguistic optimization problem (MOLOP) and use the novel perceptual reasoning (PR) based methodology for solving it. We have also compared the results of the PR based solution methodology with those obtained from the 2-tuple based solution methodology. PR based solution methodology offers three main advantages viz., it generates unique recommendations, here the linguistic recommendations match a codebook word, and also the word model comes before the word. 2-tuple based solution methodology fails to give all these advantages. Thus, we feel that our work is novel and will provide directions for the future research.

Decision making in real-life scenarios may often be modeled as an optimization problem. It requires the consideration of various attributes like human preferences and thinking, which constrain achieving the optimal value of the problem objectives. The value of the objectives may be maximized or minimized, depending on the situation. Numerous times, the values of these problem parameters are in linguistic form, as human beings naturally understand and express themselves using words. These problems are therefore termed as linguistic optimization problems (LOPs), and are of two types, namely single objective linguistic optimization problems (SOLOPs) and multi-objective linguistic optimization problems (MOLOPs). In these LOPs, the value of the objective function(s) may not be known at all points of the decision space, and therefore, the objective function(s) as well as problem constraints are linked by the if-then rules. Tsukamoto inference method has been used to solve these LOPs; however, it suffers from drawbacks. As, the use of linguistic information inevitably calls for the utilization of computing with words (CWW), and therefore, 2-tuple linguistic model based solution methodologies were proposed for LOPs. However, we found that 2-tuple linguistic model based solution methodologies represent the semantics of the linguistic information using a combination of type-1 fuzzy sets and ordinal term sets. As, the semantics of linguistic information are best modeled using the interval type-2 fuzzy sets, hence we propose solution methodologies for LOPs based on CWW approach of perceptual computing, in this paper. The perceptual computing based solution methodologies use a novel design of CWW engine, called the perceptual reasoning (PR). PR in the current form is suitable for solving SOLOPs and, hence, we have also extended it to the MOLOPs.

Computing with words (CWW) has emerged as a powerful tool for processing the linguistic information, especially the one generated by human beings. Various CWW approaches have emerged since the inception of CWW, such as perceptual computing, extension principle based CWW approach, symbolic method based CWW approach, and 2-tuple based CWW approach. Furthermore, perceptual computing can use interval approach (IA), enhanced interval approach (EIA), or Hao-Mendel approach (HMA), for data processing. There have been numerous works in which HMA was shown to be better at word modelling than EIA, and EIA better than IA. But, a deeper study of these works reveals that HMA captures lesser fuzziness than the EIA or IA. Thus, we feel that EIA is more suited for word modelling in multi-person systems and HMA for single-person systems (as EIA is an improvement over IA). Furthermore, another set of works, compared the performances perceptual computing to the other above said CWW approaches. In all these works, perceptual computing was shown to be better than other CWW approaches. However, none of the works tried to investigate the reason behind this observed better performance of perceptual computing. Also, no comparison has been performed for scenarios where the inputs are differentially weighted. Thus, the aim of this work is to empirically establish that EIA is suitable for multi-person systems and HMA for single-person systems. Another dimension of this work is also to empirically prove that perceptual computing gives better performance than other CWW approaches based on extension principle, symbolic method and 2-tuple especially in scenarios where inputs are differentially weighted.