Practical uses of fuzzy theory?

Question

Hi all,

from your experience/from what you have encountered, what are some practical applications of fuzzy systems? I know about system control and fuzzy controllers, about intrinsic linguistic support, but here I refer to concrete applications of fuzzy, where this approach was proven to be successful or fitted very well.

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

Fuzzy logic is used in the operation or programming of:

* Air conditioners
* Automobile and such vehicle subsystems as automatic transmissions, ABS and cruise control
* Tokyo monorail
* Cameras
* Digital image processing, such as edge detection
* Dishwashers
* Elevators
* Some microcontrollers and microprocessors (e.g. Freescale 68HC12)
* Hydrometeor classification algorithms for polarimetric weather radar
* Language filters on message boards and chat rooms for filtering out offensive text
* The Massive engine used in the Lord of the Rings films, which allowed large-scale armies to enact random yet orderly movements
* Mineral Deposit estimation
* Pattern recognition in Remote Sensing
* Rice cookers
* Video game artificial intelligence
* Home appliances (e.g. washing machine)

Here's another detailed list of applications for fuzzy logic. And some advocacy about how fuzzy logic is good for some applications.

Answer 2

We have implemented a robotic path planner using a fuzzy controller. Traditionally, controllers are implemented using PID Controllers and are a real pain to calibrate. A fuzzy controller is more intuitive to program, since it uses a mapping table that explores the human knowledge.

For example, this could be a fuzzy rule in a fuzzy controller:

IF distance from car in front of you IS small AND speed IS very fast 
  THEN brake pressure IS very high.

Traditional fuzzy logic (fuzzy sets, etc) are employed to define the ranges for things like "very fast" and "small" and the corresponding operations (AND, OR, etc).

From my experience, 90% of time a traditional and proven PID controller will be enough, simple and reliable.

Answer 3

Optical character reader softwares and handwritting recognition uses fuzzy logic.