WRNFS: Width Residual Neuro Fuzzy System, a Fast-Learning Algorithm with High Interpretability

Abstract

Although the deep neural network has a strong fitting ability, it is difficult to be applied to safety-critical fields because of its poor interpretability. Based on the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and the concept of residual network, a width residual neuro-fuzzy system (WRNFS) is proposed to improve the interpretability performance in this paper. WRNFS is used to transform a regression problem of high-dimensional data into the sum of several low-dimensional neuro-fuzzy systems. The ANFIS model in the next layer is established based on the low dimensional data and the residual of the ANFIS model in the former layer. The performance of WRNFS is compared with traditional ANFIS on three data sets. The results showed that WRNFS has high interpretability (fewer layers, fewer fuzzy rules, and fewer adjustable parameters) on the premise of satisfying the fitting accuracy. The interpretability, complexity, time efficiency, and robustness of WRNFS are greatly improved when the input number of single low-dimensional systems decreases.