US 5,683,605 AGranted

Heater controlling unit using a fuzzy neural network

AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha

InventorTeruhiko Matsuoka

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Abstract

A heater controlling unit used in a heat fusing device of an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, comprises a temperature detecting unit for outputting a detected temperature, a temperature change rate computing unit for computing the surface temperature of a heat fusing roller using the output of the temperature detecting unit, and an on-time computing and controlling unit for computing a heater on-time within a predetermined period by means of a fuzzy neural network using the above temperature and a temperature change rate found by the temperature-change rate computing unit, a heater controlling circuit for controlling the on/off action of the heater, a predictive computing unit for predicting the surface temperature, and a comparing and adjusting unit for comparing the actual temperature with the predicted temperature, and, when the difference is greater than a predetermined value (e.g., .+-.5.degree. C.), for adjusting the weights of the links within the network. Accordingly, the roughly-set parameters can be amended to the ones for an optimal on-time by the sequential learning. As a result, the program can be generated in a simpler manner, and the program can be changed easily for individual units depending on aged distortion and environments thereof.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A heater controlling unit for controlling an on/off action of a heater to control a surface temperature of heat releasing means which releases heat generated by said heater through conduction, said heater controlling unit comprising:

temperature detecting means for detecting an actual temperature of a surface of said heat releasing means;
temperature change rate computing means for computing a temperature change rate within a predetermined period using the actual temperature detected by said temperature detecting means;
and
on-time computing and control means including a fuzzy neural network, said fuzzy neural network receiving the actual temperature detected by said temperature detecting means and the temperature change rate computed by said temperature change rate computing means and computing a period of time during which said heater is turned on using a fuzzy logic to output a computed value, said on-time computing and control means controlling said on/off action based on the output computed value from said fuzzy neural network,
said fuzzy neural network including a plurality of layers each having a node for outputting an output signal in response to an input signal, and a plurality of links that interlink the node of said each layer to transmit a signal among layers,
a weight of said each link, which indicates signal transmission efficiency among the nodes, being adjusted based on a difference between a target value and the output computed value from said fuzzy neural network.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.