Introduction to Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Controllers - Towards Better Uncertainty Handling in Real World Applications

Most real world applications face high levels of uncertainties that can affect the operations of such applications. Hence, there is a need to develop different approaches that can handle the available uncertainties and reduce their effects on the given application. To date, Type-1 Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLCs) have been applied with great success to many different real world applications. The traditional type-1 FLC which uses crisp type-1 fuzzy sets cannot handle high levels of uncertainties appropriately. Nevertheless it has been shown that a type-2 FLC using type-2 fuzzy sets can handle such uncertainties better and thus produce a better performance. As such, type-2 FLCs are considered to have the potential to overcome the limitations of type-1 FLCs and produce a new generation of fuzzy controllers with improved performance for many applications which require handling high levels of uncertainty. This paper will briefly introduce the interval type-2 FLC and its benefits. We will also present briefly some of the type-2 FLC real world applications.