Fuzzy Logic, Control Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The term fuzzy logic is rather ambiguous because it refers to problems and methods that belong to different fields of investigation. When scanning the literature, it is possible to find three meanings for the expression fuzzy logic. In its most popular perception, it refers to numerical computations based on fuzzy rules, for the purpose of modeling a control law in systems engineering. However, in the mathematical literature, fuzzy logic means multiple-valued logics, with the purpose of modeling partial truth values and vagueness. Lastly, in Zadeh's papers, fuzzy logic is better understood as fuzzy set-based methods for approximate reasoning at large, and approximate reasoning is a subtopic of Artificial Intelligence. This state of facts creates communication problems between researchers in the fuzzy set area and, consequently, outside the fuzzy world as well. Indeed the fields concerned with fuzzy logic, and that use this terminology, are Control Engineering, Formal Logic and Artificial Intelligence. Some of those fields almost never communicate with one another.