US 5,402,525 AGranted

Apparatus and method for automatically creating membership functions

AssigneeOMRON Corporation

InventorsAkira Okumura, Tsutomu Ishida

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Abstract

Membership functions are capable of being created with ease even by a person who is not an expert or skilled individual. Data Ai.about.Bi sensed by sensors 11.about.13 and synthesized data Mi are stored in a memory device 31 in correlation with identification codes Di of objects. The results of comparing the "tastiness" of an object Di with that of an object Dj are entered from an input unit 15 and stored in the memory device 31. An evaluating unit 32 arrays the results of comparison in accordance with inequality symbols and assigns evaluation values to these results in the order of the array. A histogram creating unit 33 generates a histogram by plotting each item of input data Ai.about.Mi along a horizontal axis and plotting the corresponding evaluation values along a vertical axis. Whether or not a function obtained by connecting the peaks of the histogram is appropriate as a basic function for creation of a membership function is judged by a judging unit 34 from the viewpoint of whether the function has a unique peak or a variance about the peak that is small. A function judged to be appropriate is normalized by a generating unit 35, thereby generating a membership function.

Claims5

Dependent claims

An apparatus for automatically creating membership functions, comprising:

first input means for entering objective numerical-value data regarding an object along with identification codes of this data;
first memory means for storing, in correlation with the identification codes, the numerical-value data entered by said first input means;
second input means for entering results of subjective judgment regarding the object, these results being entered as comparative data represented using the identification codes of the numerical-value data entered by said first input means;
second memory means for storing the comparative data entered by said second input means;
evaluating means for assigning evaluation values in correspondence with the identification codes in accordance with a ranking based upon the comparative data stored in said second memory means;
means for creating a histogram by arraying the numerical-value data, which has been stored in said first memory means, on a horizontal axis in accordance with the numerical values, and plotting, along a vertical axis, the evaluation values assigned to correspond to the identification codes associated with the numerical-value data;
judging means for judging whether the histogram created by said histogram creating means is appropriate as a basis for a membership function;
and
membership-function generating means for generating a membership function based upon a histogram judged to be appropriate by said judging means.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.