Fuzzy rule based models have a capability to approximate any continuous function to any degree of accuracy on a compact domain. The majority of FLC design process relies on heuristic knowledge of experience operators. In order to make the design process automatic we present a genetic approach to learn fuzzy rules as well as membership function parameters. Moreover, several statistical information criteria such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the Bhansali-Downham information criterion (BDIC), and the Schwarz-Rissanen information criterion (SRIC) are used to construct optimal fuzzy models by reducing fuzzy rules. A genetic scheme is used to design Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) model for identification of the antecedent rule parameters and the identification of the consequent parameters. Computer simulations are presented confirming the performance of the constructed fuzzy logic controller.

Fitted value iteration (FVI) with ordinary least squares regression is known to diverge. We present a new method, "Expansion-Constrained Ordinary Least Squares" (ECOLS), that produces a linear approximation but also guarantees convergence when used with FVI. To ensure convergence, we constrain the least squares regression operator to be a non-expansion in the infinity-norm. We show that the space of function approximators that satisfy this constraint is more rich than the space of "averagers," we prove a minimax property of the ECOLS residual error, and we give an efficient algorithm for computing the coefficients of ECOLS based on constraint generation. We illustrate the algorithmic convergence of FVI with ECOLS in a suite of experiments, and discuss its properties.

In this paper a method is proposed for performance evaluation of road traffic control systems. The method is designed to be implemented in an on-line simulation environment, which enables optimisation of adaptive traffic control strategies. Performance measures are computed using a fuzzy cellular traffic model, formulated as a hybrid system combining cellular automata and fuzzy calculus. Experimental results show that the introduced method allows the performance to be evaluated using imprecise traffic measurements. Moreover, the fuzzy definitions of performance measures are convenient for uncertainty determination in traffic control decisions.

Driven by a large number of potential applications in areas like bioinformatics, information retrieval and social network analysis, the problem setting of inferring relations between pairs of data objects has recently been investigated quite intensively in the machine learning community. To this end, current approaches typically consider datasets containing crisp relations, so that standard classification methods can be adopted. However, relations between objects like similarities and preferences are often expressed in a graded manner in real-world applications. A general kernel-based framework for learning relations from data is introduced here. It extends existing approaches because both crisp and graded relations are considered, and it unifies existing approaches because different types of graded relations can be modeled, including symmetric and reciprocal relations. This framework establishes important links between recent developments in fuzzy set theory and machine learning. Its usefulness is demonstrated through various experiments on synthetic and real-world data.

This paper shows that maintaining logical consistency of an iris recognition system is a matter of finding a suitable partitioning of the input space in enrollable and unenrollable pairs by negotiating the user comfort and the safety of the biometric system. In other words, consistent enrollment is mandatory in order to preserve system consistency. A fuzzy 3-valued disambiguated model of iris recognition is proposed and analyzed in terms of completeness, consistency, user comfort and biometric safety. It is also shown here that the fuzzy 3-valued model of iris recognition is hosted by an 8-valued Boolean algebra of modulo 8 integers that represents the computational formalization in which a biometric system (a software agent) can achieve the artificial understanding of iris recognition in a logically consistent manner.

Web Effort Estimation is a process of predicting the efforts and cost in terms of money, schedule and staff for any software project system. Many estimation models have been proposed over the last three decades and it is believed that it is a must for the purpose of: Budgeting, risk analysis, project planning and control, and project improvement investment analysis. In this paper, we investigate the use of Fuzzy ID3 decision tree for software cost estimation; it is designed by integrating the principles of ID3 decision tree and the fuzzy set-theoretic concepts, enabling the model to handle uncertain and imprecise data when describing the software projects, which can improve greatly the accuracy of obtained estimates. MMRE and Pred are used as measures of prediction accuracy for this study. A series of experiments is reported using two different software projects datasets namely, Tukutuku and COCOMO'81 datasets. The results are compared with those produced by the crisp version of the ID3 decision tree.

It is widely recognized today that the management of imprecision and vagueness will yield more intelligent and realistic knowledge-based applications. Description Logics (DLs) are a family of knowledge representation languages that have gained considerable attention the last decade, mainly due to their decidability and the existence of empirically high performance of reasoning algorithms. In this paper, we extend the well known fuzzy ALC DL to the fuzzy SHIN DL, which extends the fuzzy ALC DL with transitive role axioms (S), inverse roles (I), role hierarchies (H) and number restrictions (N). We illustrate why transitive role axioms are difficult to handle in the presence of fuzzy interpretations and how to handle them properly. Then we extend these results by adding role hierarchies and finally number restrictions. The main contributions of the paper are the decidability proof of the fuzzy DL languages fuzzy-SI and fuzzy-SHIN, as well as decision procedures for the knowledge base satisfiability problem of the fuzzy-SI and fuzzy-SHIN.

The success of an agent mediated e-market system lies in the underlying reputation management system to improve the quality of services in an information asymmetric e-market. Reputation provides an operatable metric for establishing trustworthiness between mutually unknown online entities. Reputation systems encourage honest behaviour and discourage malicious behaviour of participating agents in the e-market. A dynamic reputation model would provide virtually instantaneous knowledge about the changing e-market environment and would utilise Internets' capacity for continuous interactivity for reputation computation. This paper proposes a dynamic reputation framework using reinforcement learning and fuzzy set theory that ensures judicious use of information sharing for inter-agent cooperation. This framework is sensitive to the changing parameters of e-market like the value of transaction and the varying experience of agents with the purpose of improving inbuilt defense mechanism of the reputation system against various attacks so that e-market reaches an equilibrium state and dishonest agents are weeded out of the market.

This paper compares various optimization methods for fuzzy inference system optimization. The optimization methods compared are genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization and simulated annealing. When these techniques were implemented it was observed that the performance of each technique within the fuzzy inference system classification was context dependent.

We consider a fuzzy linear system with crisp coefficient matrix and with an arbitrary fuzzy number in parametric form on the right-hand side. It is known that the well-known existence and uniqueness theorem of a strong fuzzy solution is equivalent to the following: The coefficient matrix is the product of a permutation matrix and a diagonal matrix. This means that this theorem can be applicable only for a special form of linear systems, namely, only when the system consists of equations, each of which has exactly one variable. We prove an existence and uniqueness theorem, which can be use on more general systems. The necessary and sufficient conditions of the theorem are dependent on both the coefficient matrix and the right-hand side. This theorem is a generalization of the well-known existence and uniqueness theorem for the strong solution.