IMPROVING UNDERSTANDABILITY AND UNCERTAINTY MODELING OF DATA USING FUZZY LOGIC SYSTEMS

The need for automation, optimality and efficiency has made modern day control and monitoring systems extremely complex and data abundant. However, the complexity of the systems and the abundance of raw data has reduced the understandability and interpretability of data which results in a reduced state awareness of the system. Furthermore, different levels of uncertainty introduced by sensors and actuators make interpreting and accurately manipulating systems difficult. Classical mathematical methods lack the capability to capture human knowledge and increase understandability while modeling such uncertainty. Fuzzy Logic has been shown to alleviate both these problems by introducing logic based on vague terms that rely on human understandable terms. The use of linguistic terms and simple consequential rules increase the understandability of system behavior as well as data. Use of vague terms and modeling data from non-discrete prototypes enables modeling of uncertainty. However, due to recent trends, the primary research of fuzzy logic have been diverged from the basic concept of understandability. Furthermore, high computational costs to achieve robust uncertainty modeling have led to restricted use of such fuzzy systems in real-world applications. Thus, the goal of this dissertation is to present algorithms and techniques that improve understandability and uncertainty modeling using Fuzzy Logic Systems. In order to achieve this goal, this dissertation presents the following major contributions: 1) a novel methodology for generating Fuzzy Membership Functions based on understandability, 2) Linguistic Summarization of data using if-then type consequential rules, and 3) novel Shadowed Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Systems for uncertainty modeling. Finally, these presented techniques are applied to real world systems and data to exemplify their relevance and usage