Foundations of fuzzy answer set programming

Answer set programming (ASP) is a declarative language that is tailored towards combinatorial search problems. Although ASP has been applied to many problems, such as planning, configuration and verification of software, and database repair, it is less suitable for describing continuous problems. In this thesis we therefore studied fuzzy answer set programming (FASP). FASP is a language that combines ASP with ideas from fuzzy logic -- a class of many-valued logics that are able to describe continuous problems. We study the following topics: 1. An important issue when modeling continuous optimization problems is how to cope with overconstrained problems. In many cases we can opt to allow imperfect solutions, i.e. solutions that do not satisfy all constraints, but are sufficiently acceptable. However, the question which one of these imperfect solutions is most suitable then arises. Current approaches to fuzzy answer set programming solve this problem by attaching weights to the rules of the program. However, it is often not clear how these weights should be chosen and moreover weights do not allow to order different solutions. We improve upon this technique by using aggregators, which eliminate the aforementioned problems. This allows a richer modeling language and bridges the gap between FASP and other techniques such as valued constraint satisfaction problems. 2. The wishes of users and implementers of a programming language are often in direct conflict with each other. Users prefer a rich language that is easy to model in, whereas implementers prefer a small language that is easy to implement. We reconcile these differences by identifying a core language for FASP, called core FASP (CFASP), that only consists of non-constraint rules with monotonically increasing functions and negators in the body. We show that CFASP is capable of simulating constraint rules, monotonically decreasing functions, aggregators, S-implicators and classical negation. Moreover we remark that the simulations of constraints and classical negation bear a great resemblance to their simulations in classical ASP, which provides further insight into the relationship between ASP and FASP. 3. As a first step towards the creation of an implementation method for FASP we research whether it is possible to translate a FASP program to a fuzzy SAT problem. We introduce the concept of the completion of a FASP program and show that for programs without loops the models of the completion coincide with the answer sets. Furthermore we show that if a program has loops, we can translate the program to a fuzzy SAT problem by generalizing the concept of loop formulas. We illustrate this on a continuous version of the k-center problem. Such a translation is important because it allows us to solve FASP programs by means of solvers for fuzzy SAT. Under the appropriate conditions it is for example possible to solve FASP programs by means of off-the-shelf solvers for mixed integer programming (MIP)

Monotonicity aspects of linguistic fuzzy models

Their interpretable model structure sets linguistic fuzzy m models apart from other modelling techniques and is considered their greatest asset. Therefore, in the identification process of a linguistic fuzzy model, the interpretability of the model should be safeguarded or at least be balanced against its accuracy. A good trade-off between accuracy and interpretability can be obtained by including as much qualitative knowledge as possible in the data-driven model identification process. Monotonicity is the type of qualitative knowledge that plays a central role in this dissertation. Monotone is hereby interpreted as order-preserving. This dissertation contributes to the ecological modelling domain by the application of fuzzy ordered classifiers to a habitat suitability modelling problem of river sites along springs to small rivers in the Central and Western Plains of Europe for 86 macroinvertebrate species. Furthermore, it contributes to the fuzzy modelling domain by (1) introducing an accurate and fast computational method for determining the crisp output of Mamdani-Assilian models applying the Center of Gravity defuzzification method and using fuzzy output partitions of trapezial membership functions, (2) presenting a new performance measure for fuzzy ordered classifiers, referred to as the average deviation (AD) as it takes the ordering of the output classes into account, (3) formulating guidelines for designers of monotone linguistic fuzzy models and (4) introducing a new inference procedure, called ATL-ATM inference, for linguistic fuzzy models with a monotone rule base

Fuzzy techniques for noise removal in image sequences and interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology

Image sequences play an important role in today's world. They provide us a lot of information. Videos are for example used for traffic observations, surveillance systems, autonomous navigation and so on. Due to bad acquisition, transmission or recording, the sequences are however usually corrupted by noise, which hampers the functioning of many image processing techniques. A preprocessing module to filter the images often becomes necessary. After an introduction to fuzzy set theory and image processing, in the first main part of the thesis, several fuzzy logic based video filters are proposed: one filter for grayscale video sequences corrupted by additive Gaussian noise and two color extensions of it and two grayscale filters and one color filter for sequences affected by the random valued impulse noise type. In the second main part of the thesis, interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology is studied. Mathematical morphology is a theory intended for the analysis of spatial structures that has found application in e.g. edge detection, object recognition, pattern recognition, image segmentation, image magnification… In the thesis, an overview is given of the evolution from binary mathematical morphology over the different grayscale morphology theories to interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology and the interval-valued image model. Additionally, the basic properties of the interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators are investigated. Next, also the decomposition of the interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators is investigated. We investigate the relationship between the cut of the result of such operator applied on an interval-valued image and structuring element and the result of the corresponding binary operator applied on the cut of the image and structuring element. These results are first of all interesting because they provide a link between interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology and binary mathematical morphology, but such conversion into binary operators also reduces the computation. Finally, also the reverse problem is tackled, i.e., the construction of interval-valued morphological operators from the binary ones. Using the results from a more general study in which the construction of an interval-valued fuzzy set from a nested family of crisp sets is constructed, increasing binary operators (e.g. the binary dilation) are extended to interval-valued fuzzy operators

The *-composition -A Novel Generating Method of Fuzzy Implications: An Algebraic Study

Fuzzy implications are one of the two most important fuzzy logic connectives, the other being t-norms. They are a generalisation of the classical implication from two-valued logic to the multivalued setting. A binary operation I on [0; 1] is called a fuzzy implication if (i) I is decreasing in the first variable, (ii) I is increasing in the second variable, (iii) I(0; 0) = I(1; 1) = 1 and I(1; 0) = 0. The set of all fuzzy implications defined on [0; 1] is denoted by I. Fuzzy implications have many applications in fields like fuzzy control, approximate reasoning, decision making, multivalued logic, fuzzy image processing, etc. Their applicational value necessitates new ways of generating fuzzy implications that are fit for a specific task. The generating methods of fuzzy implications can be broadly categorised as in the following: (M1): From binary functions on [0; 1], typically other fuzzy logic connectives, viz., (S;N)-, R-, QL- implications, (M2): From unary functions on [0,1], typically monotonic functions, for instance, Yager’s f-, g- implications, or from fuzzy negations, (M3): From existing fuzzy implications