Neurocomputing 237 (2017) 166–174

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Neurocomputing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom

Particle filtering approach to membership function adjustment in fuzzy MARK

logic systems
⁎
Jun Ho Chunga, Jung Min Pakb, Choon Ki Ahna, , Sung Hyun Youa, Myo Taeg Lima,
Moon Kyou Songc
a
School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, 145, Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, South Korea
b
Department of Electrical Engineering, Wonkwang University, 460 Iksandae-ro, Iksan, Jeonbuk, South Korea
c
Department of Electronics Convergence Engineering, Wonkwang University, 460 Iksandae-ro, Iksan, Jeonbuk, South Korea

A R T I C L E I N F O A BS T RAC T

Communicated by Xiaojie Su The fuzzy logic system has been a popular tool for modeling nonlinear systems in recent years. In the fuzzy logic
Keywords: system, the shape of the membership function has a significant effect on the modeling accuracy. Thus,
Fuzzy logic system membership function adjustment methods have been studied and developed. However, in highly nonlinear
Fuzzy cruise control systems, the existing membership function adjustment method based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) may
Membership function exhibit poor performance due to the linearization error. In this paper, to overcome the drawback of the EKF-
PF-based membership function adjustment based membership function adjustment (EKFMFA), we propose a new membership function adjustment
method based on the particle filter (PF). The proposed PF-based membership function adjustment (PFMFA)
does not suffer from performance degradation due to the linearization error. We demonstrate that the PFMFA
outperforms the EKFMFA through the simulation of a fuzzy cruise control system.

1. Introduction
Soft computing techniques, such as the fuzzy logic system, the
neural network, and the genetic algorithm, have been used for
modeling nonlinear systems in recent years [1–6]. In particular, a
fuzzy logic system has the ability to deal with unclear control rules
expressed by human language and thus is a popular tool for control
systems [7–13]. A fuzzy logic system includes four components: a rule
base, input scale factors, output scale factors, and membership func-
tions [14]. During the past few decades, diagnosing the component that
significantly affects the output performance of a fuzzy logic system has
been an important issue. According to [14,15], obtaining a desired
output performance in a fuzzy logic system is closely related to
adjusting fuzzy rules and membership functions. The fuzzy rules are
typically expressed by several if-then rules with linguistic variables. The
construction of appropriate fuzzy rules heavily depends on the knowl-
edge of an expert. However, once the fuzzy rules are constructed, the
membership functions for a given fuzzy logic system exhibit the desired
output performance.
In [16–19], the construction of appropriate fuzzy rules and
membership functions was studied. According to these studies, a
precise fuzzy logic system can be designed by using a large number
of fuzzy rules. However, as the number of fuzzy rules increases, the
processing speed of the fuzzy logic system decreases. Thus, in [16], a
design method using the minimum number of fuzzy rules was proposed
to reduce the processing time of the fuzzy logic system. In [20], a fuzzy
logic controller was designed using a small number of fuzzy rules while
maintaining the desired performance. In [17,18], it is reported that the
output performance of a fuzzy logic system is closely related to the
parameters of membership functions. Furthermore, the output perfor-
mance of a fuzzy logic system can be improved by arranging the shape
of membership functions. In recent years, some researchers have
started to focus on modifying the membership function parameters
to obtain improved performance. Furthermore, adjusting membership
functions has been widely studied for various applications, such as
servomechanisms [11], nonlinear plant identification [21], induction
motors [22], and cruise control [23,24] with different approaches.
These methods, called membership function adjustment methods, can
be categorized into two groups: derivative-based methods and deriva-
tive-free methods [23]. Derivative-based methods include the KF, H∞
filter [25], and gradient descent, which require information about the
system for the use of derivative parameters. In contrast, derivative-free
methods, such as the genetic algorithm and the neural network, do not
require information on the system [26]. Compared with derivative-
based methods, derivative-free methods are more appropriate for
systems that contain uncertainties. In contrast, derivative-based meth-

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hironaka@korea.ac.kr (C.K. Ahn).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2016.10.006
Received 28 December 2015; Received in revised form 16 September 2016; Accepted 12 October 2016
Available online 19 October 2016
0925-2312/ © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J.H. Chung et al.
ods have the advantage of faster convergence speed.
In [23], an optimization method for membership functions via the
extended Kalman filter (EKF) was proposed. The EKF has been used
extensively in various fields. However, the limits of the EKF if a
system's nonlinearity is severe or if a system has non-Gaussian noises
have been reported by several researchers [27–34]. This is because the
EKF approximates a nonlinear system through a linearized model with
Gaussian noises [35,36]. Therefore the EKF-based algorithm, which is
referred to as the EKF-based membership function adjustment
(EKFMFA) in [23], can cause a severe problem if there exists non-
Gaussian noise or high nonlinearity. The drawbacks of the EKF were
overcome by the development of the particle filter (PF), also known as
the sequential Monte Carlo method [37,38]. The advantage of the PF is
that it is robust against nonlinearity due to the fact that it does not
linearize nonlinear systems. To overcome the drawbacks of the
EKFMFA, a new membership function adjustment method needs to
be developed. For this reason, in this paper, we propose a new
membership function adjustment method based on the PF, which has
not yet been proposed. The new method is called the PF-based
membership function adjustment (PFMFA).
The main contribution of this paper is that it proposes the PF-based
approach to adjust the parameters of the membership functions in
nonlinear systems. The PFMFA generates some initial random samples
and starts to compute the membership function's parameters recur-
sively. In the process, the obtained parameters of the membership
functions from the PFMFA are not affected by the linearization error.
Therefore, the PFMFA is more robust against nonlinearity compared
with the EKFMFA proposed in [23].
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
the PFMFA is proposed. In Section 3, simulation results are presented
to demonstrate the performance of the PFMFA. Finally, conclusions are
drawn in Section 4.
2. Main results
In this section, the PFMFA is proposed. The main purpose of the
PFMFA is to improve the output of a fuzzy logic system by adjusting
membership functions. The concept of the PFMFA is illustrated in
Fig. 1. The fuzzy logic system is initialized, and some fuzzy rules and
parameters of membership functions are obtained. In the fuzzy logic
system, the state xn of the state-space model is constructed using the
parameters of membership functions at time n. Then, the PF is applied
to xn to obtain the state of the next time step, xn+1. Using the state xn+1,
the output of the fuzzy logic system is computed. The output of the
fuzzy logic system is a fuzzy value, so defuzzification is applied to the
fuzzy output to obtain a crisp value. Then, the error function, E, is
defined by the subtraction of the obtained crisp output from the target
crisp output. Finally, a partial derivative is applied to E to minimize it
with respect to the state, xn. In the following subsections, the process of
PFMFA will be discussed in detail: (1) initializing the fuzzy logic
system, (2) the sampling importance resampling approach to member-
ship functions, (3) computing the fuzzy output, and (4) the adjustment
of membership functions.
2.1. Initialization of the fuzzy logic system
Consider that a fuzzy logic system has two inputs and one output
with triangular membership functions. The target output is assumed to
be a desired output of the fuzzy logic system to determine its
performance. For initializing the fuzzy logic system, the fuzzy rules
are assumed to be given based on an expert's knowledge applied with
trial and error. The fuzzy logic system used in this paper is derived
from [23,24]. In this fuzzy logic system, we assume that the i-th fuzzy
membership function of the j-th input, zj, and the single output, y [23].
The triangular membership function has three parameters, the middle
point, left-width, and right-width, which can be defined as mij, lij, and
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Neurocomputing 237 (2017) 166–174
rij, respectively. The degree of membership functions becomes 1 when
the input is equal to mij. When the input zj is smaller than the middle
point, mij, the degree of membership functions linearly decreases to 0
at mij − lij . Otherwise, the degree of membership functions remains at 0
if any inputs are less than mij − lij . The same approach is applied in the
case that the degree of membership functions increases. The degree of
membership functions is 1 when the input is mij. When the input, zj, is
bigger than mij, the degree of membership functions decreases to 0
linearly. Therefore, the degree of membership functions for the input zj
is constructed as follows:
⎧1 + (zj − mij )/ lij , when − lij ≤ (zj − mij ) ≤ 0,
⎪
fij (zj ) = ⎨1 − (zj − mij )/rij , when 0 ≤ (zj − mij ) ≤ rij ,
⎪
⎩ 0, otherwise. (1)
Similarly, the j-th fuzzy membership function of the single fuzzy
output, y, can be constructed. The type of membership function is
triangular with the same notation as the input: Middle point, left-
width, and right-width as Mj, Lj and Rj, respectively. Since the
triangular membership functions are used in this paper, the degree
of membership functions for the inputs and output is designed
similarly. Therefore, the degree of membership functions for the output
y is constructed as follows:
⎧1 + (y − Mj )/ L j , when − L j ≤ (y − Mj ) ≤ 0,
⎪
ϕj (y ) = ⎨1 − (y − Mj )/Rj , when 0 ≤ (y − Mj ) ≤ Rj ,
⎪
⎩ 0, otherwise. (2)
Once the degree of membership functions for the inputs and output
is defined, the state-space model is required to apply the PFMFA. The
parameters of input and output membership functions are extracted to
construct the state x. Fig. 2 depicts the strategy of constructing the state
x. In Fig. 2, the middle point, left-width, and right-width are defined as
m, l, and r, respectively, using (1). The state x is constructed using the
parameters from the first to the α-th membership functions.
We assume that the two fuzzy inputs and one output have five
membership functions, respectively. In this paper, the state x is
composed of the parameters of the two fuzzy inputs and a single fuzzy
output. The dimension of the state vector, x, depends on the fuzzy
system. Furthermore, this method of constructing the state x can be
applied to a different fuzzy logic system. Since the fuzzy logic system
has triangular membership functions, each membership function has
three parameters to be used. Therefore, 45 parameters are used to
construct the state x. Finally, the state x with the entire parameters of
the membership functions is obtained by (1) and (2) as follows:
x = [l11 r11 m11 l21 r21 m21 ⋯ l51 r51 m51 l12 r12 m12 l22 r22 m22 ⋯ l52
r52 m52 L1 R1 M1 L 2 R2 M2 ⋯ L 5 R5 M5]T . (3)
To apply the PF using the state x in (3), a nonlinear discrete-time
system for the fuzzy logic system is designed as follows [23,24]:
xn +1 = xn + wn , (4)
dn = h (xn ) + vn , (5)
where xn and dn are the state and the target output at the n -th time
step, respectively; h (·) is a nonlinear fuzzy model; and wn and vn are
random noises. The state xn in (4) is constructed by the parameters of
the membership functions in (3) at time n. Then, the state xn becomes
xn+1 when the state is updated with the new parameters of the
membership functions at time n + 1. A nonlinear function, h (·) in (5),
is considered the actual output of the fuzzy system with the current
state xn, which is constructed by the parameters of the membership
functions. The parameters of membership functions are considered an
important factor for improving the performance of the fuzzy logic
system. Therefore, Eq. (4) is used to adjust the parameters of member-
ship functions using the PF.
J.H. Chung et al. Neurocomputing 237 (2017) 166–174

Fig. 1. Flow diagram of the particle filter-based membership function adjustment.

2.2. Sampling importance resampling approach to membership Consider that Xn = {x 0 , x1, …, xn −1, xn} and Yn = {y1, y2, …, yn −1, yn } are
functions the sequences of the state and the measurement, respectively, up to time
n and that {Xni , w∼i }N is a random measure that characterizes the
n i =1
Fig. 3 depicts the PF-based membership function adjustment posterior density [39]. Then, the posterior density is obtained as follows:
strategy for a fuzzy logic system. We assume that the initial parameters N
of the membership functions are given and some random noises are p (Xn |Yn ) ≈ ∑ w∼ni δ (Xn − Xni ),
added to the middle point, left-width, and right-width of a triangular i =1 (6)
membership function. Fig. 3(a) shows a triangular membership func- i
tion affected by noises. The blue shaded area in Fig. 3(a) represents ∼i ∝ p (Xn |Yn ) ,
wn i
noises. In this case, the exact three parameters of membership q (Xn |Yn ) (7)
functions are unknown, which makes it difficult to construct the state, where δ is the Dirac delta function; N is the total number of generated
xn. Fig. 3(b) represents the concept of the PFMFA. In Fig. 3(b), the gray ∼i is importance weights. According to the Bayesian
particles; and wn
circles and red circles are the search area and the randomly generated theorem, we can construct the posterior density in (6) as follows:
samples, respectively. The samples are generated randomly inside the
p (yn | xn ) p (xn | xn −1)
search area. Then, the PF estimates the parameters of membership p (Xn |Yn ) = p (Xn −1 |Yn −1)
p (yn | Yn −1)
functions, where the noises are considered. The bold lines in Fig. 3(c)
∝ p (yn |xn ) p (xn |xn −1) p (Xn −1 |Yn −1), (8)
show that the triangular membership function is successfully obtained
with noises. Therefore, the state xn is constructed successfully using where p (xn |Yn ) is the marginal of the posterior density p (Xn |Yn ). The
the new parameters m l11, l11̂ , and r11̂ , as shown in Fig. 3(d). importance density q is obtained as:

Fig. 2. Concept of creating state x from triangular membership functions.

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Fig. 3. (a) Triangular membership functions with random noise, (b) generating random samples on triangular membership functions, (c) identifying the membership functions from
noise, (d) new parameters of membership functions. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure caption, the reader is referred to the web version of this paper.)

q (Xn |Yn ) ≜ q (xn |Xn −1, Yn ) q (Xn −1 |Yn −1). (9) N is the total number of samples. The number of samples is closely related
to the performance of the PF. Generating many samples increases the
By substituting (8) and (9) into (7), the importance of the weight for each
accuracy of the PF, but it also causes heavy computational burden.
particle is expressed as:
Selecting the appropriate number of samples is based on trial and error.
∼i ∝ p (yn | xni ) p (xni | xni −1) p (Xni −1 | Yn −1)
wn Algorithm 1. Resampling.
q (xni | Xni −1, Yn ) q (Xni −1 | Yn −1)
i i
= ∼i p (yn | xn) p (xn | xni −1) .
wn −1
q (xni | Xni −1, Yn ) (10)
If q (xn |Xn −1, Z n ) is assumed to be q (xn |xn −1, zn ), the importance weight in
(10) can be expressed as follows:
i i i
∼i p (yn |xn ) p (xn |xn −1) .
∼i ∝ w
wn n −1
q (xni |xni −1, yn ) (11)
Then, the posterior density in (6) is approximated as follows:
N
p (xn |Yn ) ≈ ∑ w∼ni δ (xn − xni ).
i =1 (12)
The described PF in this paper is called the sequential importance
sampling filter. The most common problem of the sequential importance
sampling filter is the degeneracy phenomenon. The variance of the
importance density in (9) is only increased over time, and it causes the
poor performance of the sequential importance sampling filter [39]. To
overcome this problem, a resampling method is proposed. After a few
iterations, some samples have low weights that affect the performance of
the PF. The resampling method is used to eliminate some samples with
low weights and replace them with samples with high weights. The
resampling method process is represented by Algorithm 1. In a practical
approach, the PF is initialized by generating random samples around the
state xn at time n=0. The generated samples follow the Gaussian
distribution, which is one of the distribution methods for generating
random samples. The initial parameters of membership functions are
given when the fuzzy system is initialized, and the initial state x0 is
constructed using (3). The initial sample sets are defined as {x 0(i ) }iN=1, where

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In this paper, the generated samples are represented as follows: where z1 and z2 are fuzzy inputs, which belong to the different fuzzy
sets i and u from (1), respectively. By using (19), the fuzzy output is
x 0+, i = [l11 r11 m11 ⋯ L 5 R5 M5]T + 5 (0, σ 2 ), (i = 1, 2, …, N ), (13) computed using the rule firing strength λj and output of the new fuzzy
where 5 (0, σ 2)
is the Gaussian distribution with mean value 0 and membership functions. Therefore, the fuzzy output f (y )op is obtained as
variance σ2. The mean value is set to 0 to generate random samples follows:
that follow the Gaussian distribution around the initial parameters of S
the membership functions. Using (4), (5) and (13), the nonlinear f (y )op = ∑ λj ϕj (y),
discrete-time system for the fuzzy logic system is expressed as follows: j =1 (20)
xn−, i = xn+,−1i + wni −1, wni −1 ∼ 5 (0, σ12 ), (14) where S is the total number of the rules of the fuzzy logic system and ϕj
is the output of the new fuzzy membership functions where PF is
dn = h (xn−, i ) + vn , vn ∼ 5 (0, σ22 ), (15)
applied.
where xn−, i
denotes the samples that progress to the next time step;
h (xn−, i ) is the output of the fuzzy system using xn−, i ; wni −1 and vn are
noises that follow the Gaussian distribution with the mean and
variance, 0 and σ12 and σ22 , respectively. Then, the weight of each 2.4. Adjustment of membership functions
particle is computed as follows:
Since the output of the fuzzy system remains fuzzy, it needs to be
∼i = Pr (d = d *|x = x −, i ) = Pr (v = d * − h (x −, i ))
wn n n n n transformed into a crisp output using a defuzzification method.
1 ⎛ −[d* − h (xn−, i )]T (σ22)−1[d* − h (xn−, i )] ⎞ Centroid defuzzification, which is known as the center of area
∼ 1 exp ⎜ ⎟,
1 2 ⎝ 2 ⎠ defuzzification method, is used to obtain a crisp output, yl , as follows:
(2π )2 σ 22
(16) S
∑ j =1 λj βj Φj
where σ22
is the measurement covariance of wn in (5). Once the weight yl = S
,
∼i of each sample is obtained, the following equation is used to
w ∑ j =1 λj Φj (21)
n
normalize (16):

w∼i ∫ yϕj (y) dy

n
wni = N ∼j
, βj = ,
∑ j =1 wn (17) ∫ ϕj (y) dy (22)

where N is the number of samples. After normalization, the summation

of the weights becomes one. Then, the resampling method is applied to 0 ⎧
(y − Mj ) ⎫ Rj ⎧ (y − Mj ) ⎫
∫−L y ⎨1 + (y ) ⎬ dy + ∫ y ⎨1 − (y ) ⎬ dy
the generated samples from the computed weights. ⎩ j Lj ⎭ 0
⎩ Rj ⎭
In each iteration of the PF process, some samples lose their relative βj =
0 ⎧ (y − Mj ) ⎫ Rj ⎧ (y − Mj ) ⎫
weight, which causes the poor approximation of the PF. To address this ∫−L ⎨1 + (y ) ⎬ dy + ∫ ⎨1 − (y ) ⎬ dy
j ⎩ Lj ⎭ 0
⎩ Rj ⎭
drawback, the resampling method is used to eliminate some particles
with low weights and replace them with samples with high weights. By ⎡ (−L j )2 (−L j )3 (−L j )2 Mj ⎤ ⎡ (Rj )2 (Rj )3 (Rj )2 Mj ⎤
−⎢ + − ⎥+⎢ − + ⎥
following Algorithm 1, the new random samples {xnj *}iN=1 are generated ⎣ 2 3 L j 2L j ⎦ ⎣ 2 3 R j 2Rj ⎦
by (12), and the old samples, xin, with low weights are replaced by the =
⎡ (−L j )2 (−L j ) Mj ⎤ ⎡ (Rj )2 (Rj ) Mj ⎤
new samples, xnj *, with high weights. −⎢ (−L j ) + − ⎥ + ⎢Rj − − ⎥
⎣ 2L j Lj ⎦ ⎣ 2Rj Rj ⎦
Rj (3Mj + Rj ) + L j (3Mj − L j )
2.3. Computation of the fuzzy output = ,
3(Rj + L j ) (23)
The state xn+1 in (4) is constructed by new parameters of member-
ship functions, which are obtained by the PF. Using the state xn+1, the where βj and Φj in (21) are the centroid and area of the j -th output
parameters of xn+1 are used to construct new membership functions. fuzzy membership functions, respectively. The βj in (21) is computed
Then, the output of the fuzzy logic system is obtained by the new by substituting (2) into (22). Since the boundary condition of ϕj is
membership functions. The rule firing strength of the j-th rule, λj, is designed, Eq. (22) is simply defined as (23). Eq. (23) can be extended
used to compute the output of the fuzzy logic system. The rule firing to another fuzzy system. To apply the adjustment strategy, the error
strength, λj, is constructed by fuzzy operators, which describe the function E is defined as follows [23]:
relationship of fuzzy inputs. We assume that the fuzzy logic system has k
two inputs and a single output, which indicates that the fuzzy logic 1
E= ∑ gn En2,
system is a multi-input-single-output system. The general form of the 2k n =1 (24)
fuzzy rules for the multi-input-single-output system is described by if-
then rules as follows: where En = yln − ytp n ; yln and ytpn are the actual output and the target
output of the fuzzy system at the n-th time step, respectively; k is the
Ri : IF a is Ai , AND b is Bi , THEN c is Ci, (i = 1, 2, …, S ), (18) number of iterations; and gn is a weight function.
where a, b, and c are linguistic variables of the states and Ai, Bi, and Ci The adjustment strategy is performed by taking a derivative (24)
are the linguistic values of a, b, and c, respectively. The fuzzy rules in with respect to the middle point, left-half, and right-half of the input
(18) are used to evaluate the process of the fuzzy system. Using (18), and output membership functions [23,24]. Thus, the new parameters
the control actions of the fuzzy system are decided by the state of the middle point, left-width, and right-width that minimize E in (24)
variables a, b, and c. Since the fuzzy rules have an AND operator, the are obtained. Then, the old parameters of the membership functions
rule firing strength λj is constructed by the min operator as follows: are replaced with the new parameters of membership functions (l ,̂ r ,̂
l , Ll , R
m l , and M
m ). The entire process of the PFMFA is represented by
λj = min{fi1 (z1), fu2 (z2 )}, (19) Algorithm 2.

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Algorithm 2. PFMFA.

3. Demonstrative example
The simulation results of the PFMFA methods are applied to fuzzy
cruise control as a numerical example. Fuzzy cruise control [23] with
the EKFMFA is used as a comparative example. The acceleration of
vehicles can normally be derived with several external factors that are
closely related to the states of vehicles and the road, such as engine
force, drag force, and gravity-induced force, which are defined fe, fv,
and fr, respectively. Additionally, the forces that are applied to the
vehicle can be denoted by combining the vehicle mass, velocity, and
throttle position (m, v, and θ, respectively). Then, we obtain
mv ̇ = fe (θ ) − fv (v ) − fr , (25)
of the engine and the engine force coefficient, which are set to 1000 and
12,500, respectively (units in Newtons); α = 4N /(m/s)2 is the drag
coefficient; g = 9.81 m/s2 is the gravity force; m = 1000 kg is the mass of
the vehicle; the sign in (27) is the signum function; the grade in (28) is
the road grade (units in degree); and the initial velocity, v, is set to
40 m/s.
To design the fuzzy cruise control using the equations and
constants, we assume that the fuzzy cruise control has two fuzzy inputs
and a single fuzzy output. Each fuzzy variable is assumed to have five
membership functions. Table 1 shows the rule base with language
variables: NL is negative large, NS is negative small, Z is zero, PS is

fe (θ ) = fei + γ θ , (26)

fv (v ) = αv 2sign(v ), (27)

fr = mg sin(grade), (28)
where fei, γ, α, g, and m are constant values; fei and γ are the idle force

Table 1
Rule base for fuzzy cruise control.

Error

NL NS Z PS PL

Change in error NL NL NL NS NS NS
NS NL NS Z Z Z
Z NL NS Z PS PL
PS Z Z Z PS PL
PL PS PS PS PL PL
Fig. 4. Velocity comparison of the fuzzy cruise controls (10° road grade).

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Fig. 5. Absolute Error comparisons of the fuzzy cruise controls ( 10° road grade). Fig. 7. Absolute Error comparisons of the fuzzy cruise controls ( 25° road grade).

positive small, and PL is positive large. From Table 1, 25 if-then rules

are constructed as follows:

1. If the error is negative large and the change in error is positive small,
then the throttle position changes by a zero amount.
2. If the error is negative small and the change in error is positive large,
then the throttle position changes by a positive small amount.

The goal of using fuzzy cruise control is to maintain the desired

speed in any situation. The desired speed of the vehicle is set to 40 m/s
as a target crisp output. The simulation of fuzzy cruise control is
implemented when the road grade changes unexpectedly at time 0. We
assume the vehicle is on the road at 40 m/s when the driver activates
cruise control. When the road grade is increased from 0° suddenly, the
speed of the vehicle drops immediately and the fuzzy cruise control
recovers the speed to maintain the initial speed, which is 40 m/s. Fast
convergence with accuracy is selected as a key characteristic of the
desired fuzzy cruise control. With a sudden change of road grade, the
speed of the vehicle decreases and it takes a few seconds to restore the Fig. 8. Velocity comparison of the fuzzy cruise controls ( 40° road grade).

initial speed. To begin the comparison, we assume that there are some
noises in the fuzzy cruise model. The obtained velocity of fuzzy cruise
control is observed in 15 s. For PFMFA methods, 200 particles are used
to generate samples. The road grade changes from 0° to 40° to prove
how the PFMFA can serve as a replacement for the EKFMFA. To
evaluate the performance of the membership function adjustment
methods, the absolute error is defined as follows:

Fig. 9. Absolute error comparisons of the fuzzy cruise controls ( 40° road grade).

E = |yln − ytp n |, (29)

Fig. 6. Velocity comparison of the fuzzy cruise controls ( 25° road grade).
where yln and ytp n are actual and target output, respectively, which are
given in (24).
Fig. 4 depicts the velocity comparison results of default, EKFMFA,
and PFMFA fuzzy cruise control when the road grade is changed from
an initial degree of 0 to an increased degree of 10 unexpectedly. In this

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Table 2
Root-mean-square-error comparisons of default, EKFMFA, and PFMFA with various
road grades.
Default EKFMFA PFMFA
10° road grade 0.2675 0.2292 0.2081
25° road grade 0.8440 0.6812 0.5574
40° road grade 1.2551 0.9506 0.7122
case, it is clear that the default result where membership function
adjustment is not applied and the EKFMFA suffer from noises and do
not track the target output velocity correctly. In contrast to the default
and the EKFMFA, the PFMFA exhibits particularly outstanding
performance. Moreover, the converge performance of the PFMFA
method is fast compared with that of the default and the EKFMFA.
Fig. 5 illustrates error comparison results of Fig. 4. The output of the
EKFMFA shows slightly better performance than the default fuzzy
output, but neither the EKFMFA nor the default display outstanding
performance compared with that of the PFMFA.
Fig. 6 shows the output of different fuzzy cruise controls when the
road grade changes to 25° at time 0. The performance comparison
shows that the membership function adjustment provides superior
output compared with the default in Fig. 4. In Fig. 6, the performance
of the PFMFA is verified through a demonstration compared with that
of the others. In this case, the PFMFA shows less overshoot and
converges to the target output effectively. In Fig. 7, the error
comparison is represented. It can be seen that the membership
function adjustment methods show smaller error than the default. To
compare the EKFMFA and PFMFA, the PFMFA shows less error and
fast convergence, which is significantly effective when the road grade
increases unexpectedly. Figs. 8 and 9 exhibit the outputs of different
fuzzy cruise controls and the error comparisons when the road grade is
increased from zero to 40°. When the road grade increases abruptly, the
initial velocity drops rapidly and the fuzzy cruise control starts to
recover the initial velocity. The velocity of the default method becomes
volatile. In addition, the default method does not converge fast enough,
while the other methods with membership function adjustment show
superior performances. Compared with the EKFMFA and PFMFA
methods, the PFMFA method converges to the target output fast and
has smaller overshoot than the EKFMFA method. The error compar-
ison is represented in Fig. 9. It is clear that the membership function
adjustment methods are superior to that of the default. When the road
grade changes rapidly, the PFMFA exhibits an outstanding perfor-
mance compared with that of the others.
Table 2 represents the root-mean-square-error comparisons of the
default, EKFMFA, and PFMFA from Figs. 5, 7 and 9, respectively. The
simulations are performed with various road grades to compare the
methods and determine which method is effective in real applications
where noises exist. The root-mean-square-error values of Table 2
indicate the convergence speed of each approach with various road
grades and that the PFMFA is fast to converge its initial velocity
compared with the others. In the EKFMFA, the linearization error is
accumulated constantly, which causes performance degradation in
obtaining the membership function's parameters. In contrast to the
EKFMFA, the PFMFA does not perform the linearization of nonlinear
systems where the linearization error is ignored. From Table 2, it can
be verified that the PFMFA is significantly effective for fuzzy cruise
control.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, a new method for the adjustment of membership
functions via the PF, called the PFMFA, was proposed, and its
performance was demonstrated in simulations of a fuzzy cruise control
system. While the existing EKFMFA suffers from performance degra-
173
Neurocomputing 237 (2017) 166–174
dation due to the linearization error, the PFMFA can provide the
accurate modeling of highly nonlinear systems in a fuzzy logic system.
The simulation results showed that the PFMFA quickly converges to
the target output and exhibits less overshoot than the EKFMFA. Since
the PFMFA outperforms the EKFMFA, the PFMFA is expected to be a
good alternative to the EKFMFA in various fuzzy logic system applica-
tions.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Energy Efficiency &
Resources Core Technology Program of the Korea Institute of Energy
Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP), granted financial
resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, Republic of
Korea (No. 20142010102390), in part by the Basic Science Research
Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (NRF-
2014R1A1A1006101), and in part by the Basic Science Research
Program through the NRF funded by the Ministry of Education
(NRF-2016R1D1A1B01016071).
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Jun Ho Chung received his B.S. degree in Physics,
Astronomy, and Material Sciences from Missouri State
University, USA, in 2013. Since 2013, he has been a
Graduate Student in the School of Electrical Engineering
at Korea University, Seoul. His research interests include
optimal, fuzzy, intelligent, and receding horizon controls.
Jung Min Pak received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees
in Electrical Engineering from Korea University in Seoul,
Republic of Korea, in 2006, 2008, and 2015, respectively.
He was a Research Professor of the Brain Korea 21 Plus
Humanware IT Program at Korea University from 2015 to
2016. He is currently a Professor with the Department of
Electrical Engineering at Wonkwang University, Iksan,
Republic of Korea. His research interests include state
estimation, localization, and visual object tracking.
174
Neurocomputing 237 (2017) 166–174
Choon Ki Ahn received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in the
School of Electrical Engineering from Korea University,
Seoul, Korea, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He received
the Ph.D. degree in the School of Electrical Engineering &
Computer Science from Seoul National University, Seoul,
Korea, in 2006. He is currently a Crimson Professor of
Excellence with the College of Engineering and a Professor
with the School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University,
Seoul, Korea. He was the recipient of the Early Career
Research Award and Excellent Research Achievement
Award of Korea University in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
He was awarded the Medal for `Top 100 Engineers' 2010
by IBC, Cambridge, England. In 2012, his EPJE paper was
ranked #1 in the TOP 20 Articles in the field of neural networks by BioMedLib. In 2013,
his ND paper was selected as one of the `5 Key Papers' from Nonlinear Dynamics,
Springer. In 2015, his paper was ranked #6 in the `Top 50 Most Popular Articles' for
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. In 2016, he was ranked #1 in Electrical/
Electronic Engineering and #2 in entire areas of Engineering among Korean young
professors based on paper quality. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. His current
research interests are FIR filtering, two-dimensional system theory, fuzzy systems, neural
networks, and nonlinear dynamics. He has been on the editorial board of international
journals, including the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Neurocomputing, International
Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems, IEEE Access, Journal of Control and
Decision, Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Advances in Mechanical Engineering,
International Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control, and Journal of
Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems.
Sung Hyun You received his B.S. degree in Electrical
Engineering from Seoul National University of Science and
Technology, Seoul, in 2013. Since 2013, he has been a
Graduate Student in the School of Electrical Engineering at
Korea University, Seoul. His research interests include
optimal, robust, intelligent, and receding horizon controls.
Myo Taeg Lim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in
Electrical Engineering from Korea University, Korea in
1985 and 1987, respectively. He also received M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers
University, NJ, USA in 1990 and 1994, respectively. He
was a Senior Research Engineer, Samsung Advanced
Institute of Technology and a Professor in the
Department of Control and Instrumentation, National
Changwon University, Korea. Since 1996, he has been a
Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Korea
University. His research interests include optimal and
robust control, vision based motion control, and autono-
mous mobile robots. He is the author or coauthor of more
than 80 journal papers and two books (Optimal Control of Singularly Perturbed Linear
Systems and Application: High-Accuracy Techniques, Control Engineering Series, Marcel
Dekker, New York, 2001; Optimal Control: Weakly Coupled Systems and Applications,
Automation and Control Engineering Series, CRC Press, New York, 2009). Dr. Lim
currently serves as an Editor for International Journal of Control, Automation, and
Systems. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems, and a member
of the IEEE and Korea Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Moon Kyou Song received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in Electronics Engineering from Korea University
in Seoul, Korea, in 1998, 1990, and 1994, respectively.
Since 1994, he has been a Professor in the Department of
Electronics Convergence Engineering at Wonkwang
University in Jeonbuk, Korea. He was an Invited
Researcher with the Electronic Telecommunications
Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Korea, from 1997 to
1998 and 2000 to 2001. He was a Visiting Professor with
University of Victoria, BC, Canada, during 1999–2000 and
Stanford University, CA, USA, during 2006–2007. His
research interests include signal processing and commu-
nications. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.