What is Soft Computing? Revisiting Possible Answers

Abstract

The term Soft Computing was coined by L.A. Zadeh in the early 90’s. Since that time many researchers have tried to define it considering different approaches: main constituents, properties, abilities, etc. In addition, the term Computational Intelligence has also gained popularity having a somehow quite close meaning to that of Soft Computing. The central idea of this paper is to present, analyze, compare and discuss a few of the definitions that can be found on literature; not trying to find the best but to offer the reader arguments to make his/her own decision.