Combination of Particle Swarm and Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms for Fuzzy Systems Design

Fuzzy systems (FSs) have been extensively applied to automatic control, pattern recognition, and decision analysis. However, a common bottleneck is encountered in the derivation of fuzzy rules, which is often difficult, time consuming, and relies on expert knowledge. To automate the design of FSs, many metaheuristic learning algorithms have been proposed. One major optimization category uses Swarm Intelligence (SI) model (Kennedy et al., 2001). The SI technique studies collective behavior in decentralized systems. Its development was based on mimicking the social behavior of animals or insects in an effort to find the optima in the problem space. SI models are initialized with a population of random solutions. One well-known SI model is particle swarm optimization (PSO) (Kennedy & Eberhart, 1995). Many modified PSO models have been proposed and successfully applied to different optimization problems (Clerc & Kennedy, 2002; Bergh & Engelbrecht, 2004; Ratnaweera et al., 2004; Juang, 2004; Kennedy & Mendes, 2006; Parrott & Li, 2006; Chen & Li, 2007). FS design using PSO has also been proposed in several studies (Juang, 2004; Chatterjee et al., 2005; Juang et al., 2007; Araujo & Coelho, 2008; Sharma et al., 2009). Another well-known SI is ant colony optimization (ACO) (Dorigo & Stutzle, 2004). The ACO technique is inspired by real ant colony observations. It is a multi-agent approach that was originally proposed to solve difficult discrete combinatorial optimization problems, such as the traveling salesman problem (TSP) (Dorigo et al., 1996; Dorigo & Gambardella, 1997). In the original ACO meta-heuristic, artificial ant colonies cooperate to find good solutions for difficult discrete optimization problems. Different ACO models have been applied to FS design problems (Cassillas et al., 2000; Cassillas et al., 2005; Mucientes & Casillas; 2007; Juang & Lo, 2007; Juang et al., 2008; Juang & Lu; 2009). In (Cassillas et al.,2000; Mucientes & Casillas; 2007; Juang et al., 2008; Juang & Lu; 2009), the FS input space was partitioned in grid type with antecedent part parameters of an FS manually assigned in advance. In (Juang & Lo, 2007), the FS input space was flexibly partitioned using a fuzzy clustering-like algorithm in order to reduce the total number of rules. For all of these studies, the consequent part parameters were optimized in discrete space using ACO. Since only the consequent part parameters are optimized, and the optimization space is restricted to be discrete, the designed FSs are unsuitable for problems where high accuracy is a major concern. Source: Fuzzy Systems, Book edited by: Ahmad Taher Azar, ISBN 978-953-7619-92-3, pp. 216, February 2010, INTECH, Croatia, downloaded from SCIYO.COM