Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE
International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation
June 25 - 28, 2006, Luoyang, China
Optimal design of Fuzzy controller based on Ant colony
algorithms
Weixing Zhu and Jianliang Chen
School of Electrical and Information Engineering
Jiangsu University
Zhenjiang,China 212013
wxzhu@ujs.edu.cn; cjlonly@126.com
Abstract- In the design of the fuzzy controller, the fuzzy
rules are constructed according to the knowledge and experience
of experts. It will be hard to design a good fuzzy controller when
the experiences of experts are not available or not complete.
Therefore, how to optimize initial the fuzzy rules becomes the
key of design of a good fuzzy controller. Ant colony algorithm is
a novel simulated evolutionary algorithm. It provides a new
method to solve the complex combined optimization problem.
This paper takes advantage of the ant colony algorithm to
optimize the fuzzy rules of a fuzzy controller, and can settle the
problem of designing fuzzy controller without the expert’s
experience. The simulating results show that the fuzzy controller
designed has the desired dynamic and static performance.
Keywords-fuzzy controller, Optimal design, ant colony
algorithm, combined optimization
ĉ. INTRODUCTION
Fuzzy control is a practical alternative for a variety of
challenging control applications since it provides a convenient
method for constructing nonlinear controllers via the use of
heuristic information. Such heuristic information may come
from an operator who has acted as a “human-in-the-loop”
controller for a process. In the design of the fuzzy controller,
the fuzzy rules which are incorporated into a fuzzy controller
to emulate the decision-making process of the human are
constructed according to the knowledge and experience of
experts. It will be hard to design a good fuzzy controller when
the experiences of experts are not available or not complete.
Therefore, how to optimize initial the fuzzy rules becomes the
key of design of a good fuzzy controller. Construction of
fuzzy rules is similarly a combined optimization problem.
Moreover, it will become an NP-hard problem with the
number of premises and consequents increasing. Several
algorithms have been proposed in literature to solve combined
optimization problem [12]. Recently, evolutionary and
meta-heuristics like, tabu search, genetic algorithms and
simulated annealing have been successfully employed for
such problem.
Ant colony algorithm is a novel simulated evolutionary
algorithm. It has been applied to solve difficult combinatorial
optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem

(TPS) and the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) [2]. There
are currently many ongoing activities in the scientific
community to extend and apply ant colony algorithms to
1-4244-0466-5/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE
1603
Binjie Zhu
Department of Electronic Engineering
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China 100084
shubj03@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
many different discrete optimization problems. Recent
applications cover problems VXFK DV vehicle routing,
sequential ordering [7], graph coloring, routing in
communications networks [6] ,and so on. In this paper, the
fuzzy rule-base will be automatically constructed and
optimized by using the ant colony algorithm in order to obtain
a suitable fuzzy controller with good dynamic performance
and static performance. Before using the ant colony algorithm
into optimization of fuzzy rules, some appropriate
modifications to the ant colony algorithm will be made. The
results of the simulation prove the good performance of the
fuzzy controller and the feasibility of the algorithm
application.
Ċ. ANT COLONY ALGORITH
Ant colony algorithm is inspired by the observation of real ant
colonies. It is proposed first by Italian scholars M.Dorigo, and
his colleagues. While walking from food sources to the nest,
ants deposit on the ground a substance called pheromone,
forming in this way a pheromone trail. The ants communicate
with one another by means of pheromone trails and exchange
information about which path should be followed. The more
the number of ants traces a given path, the more attractive this
path (trail) becomes and is followed by other ants by
depositing their own pheromone. According to this principle
of positive feedback, the ant colony can find the shortest route
between the nest and the food sources quickly[8][9][10]. As
shown in Fig. 1, two ants start from their nest in search of
food source at the same time to different directions. One of
them chooses the path that turns out to be shorter while the
other takes the longer sojourn. The ant moving in the shorter
path returns to the nest earlier and the pheromone deposited in
this path is obviously more than what is deposited in the
longer path. Other ants in the nest thus have high probability
of following the shorter route. These ants also deposit their
own pheromone on this path. More and more ants are soon
attracted to this path and hence the optimal route from the nest
to the food source and back is very quickly established. Such
a pheromone-meditated cooperative search process leads to
the intelligent swarm behavior.
In the application of ant colony algorithm, the artificial
ants’ nature is an abstraction of those behavioral traits of real
ants. In order to implement the ant colony algorithm, the
combinatorial optimization problem under consideration has
 St ar t

I ni t i al i ze Model

t =0

t =t +1

k=0

k=k+1

Const r uct Tr i al

I t er at i on
Sol ut i on

fig. 1 Movement of ant algorithm from nest-food source and back: Cal cul at e Cost

to be constructed as G=(D,L,C), where D = {d1 , d 2 , " , d n } k=m?

No

is a set of points at which decisions have to be made, Yes

L = {l i ( j ) } is the set of options (j) available at each decision Updat e Pher omone
points (i), and C = {ci ( j ) } is the set of costs associated with
No
options L = {li( j ) }. A feasible path over G is called a solution Meet t er mi nat i on
cr i t er i a?

( ϕ ) and a minimum cost path is an optimal solution ( ϕ ∗ ). Yes

The cost of a solution is denoted by f (ϕ ) and the cost of the St op

optimal solution by f (ϕ ∗) [1]. The ant colony algorithm is

Fig.2 the flowchart of ant colony optimization algorithm

used to find a minimum cost path----an optimal solution. The
main steps in the algorithm are shown in Fig.2 and include:
trial solutions are constructed incrementally as artificial ants
move from one decision point to the next until all decision
points have been covered. The generation of a complete trial
solution and calculation of the corresponding cost are
completed in the same cycle. Pheromone is updated after the
completion of one iteration. A iteration consists of m cycles,
where m is the number of ants used.
For example, a general definition of the traveling
salesman problem is the follow [2]. Consider a set of N nodes,
representing cities, and a set of L arcs fully connecting the
nodes N. Let d ij be the length of the arc (i , j ) ∈ L , that
is , the distance between city i and j, where i , j ∈ N . The
TSP is the problem of finding a minimal length Hamiltonian
circuit on the graph G = ( N , L ) , where a Hamiltonian
circuit of graph G is a closed tour visiting once and only once
all the nodes of G, and its length is the sum of the lengths of
all the arcs.
A cost set of C could present the set of choose from city i
to city j, which is associated with the concentration of
pheromone and the length of arc in the trial solution. At each
decision point of constructing trial solution, the component to
be added to the trial solution is chosen stochastically
according to the following equation [2] :
p i ( j ) (t ) =
k
[τ i ( j ) (t )]α [η i ( j ) ]β (1)
pheromone associated with option l i ( j ) at iteration t;
η i ( j ) = 1 / d i ( j ) is the local heuristic factor; and ¢and £ is
the exponent parameters that control the relative importance
of pheromone and the local heuristic factor. It should be
noticed that the addition of the local heuristic factor η i ( j ) is
analogous to providing real ants with sight, which is
sometimes called “visibility”. Moreover, the using of the
taboo table makes sure that each point could be visited only
once, which means providing artificial ants with memory.
Once an iteration has been completed, and m trial
solutions have been constructed, the pheromone trails are
updated, which use the form of the equation as follows:
τ i ( j ) (t +1) = ρτ i ( j ) (t ) + Δτ i ( j ) ˄2˅
where τ i ( j ) (t + 1 ) presents concentration of pheromone
associated with option l i ( j ) at iteration t+1; τ i ( j ) (t )
presents concentration of pheromone associated with option
l i ( j ) at iteration t; ² ˄ 0 ≤ ρ ≤ 1 ˅ is the remaining
coefficient of pheromone; Δτ i( j )
is the change in
pheromone concentration associated with option l i ( j ) at
iteration t. Δ τ i ( j ) is calculated using the function as follow:
m
Δ τ i( j ) = ¦ Δτ k
i( j )
(3)
k =1

¦ li ( j )
[τ i( j ) (t )]α [η i ( j ) ]β where Δ τ ik( j ) presents the change in the concentration of

where p ik( j ) (t ) is the probability of option l i ( j ) is chosen pheromone associated with option l i ( j ) at cycle k during

τ i ( j ) (t ) is the concentration of
iteration t. the value of Δ τ ik( j ) is given as follow:
at cycle k and iteration t;

1604
 Inf erence
Def uzzi f i cat i on
r+ e u
Fuzzi f i cat i on
mechani sm
ƶ Process
- transfer function [5] G(s)=K/[s(Ts+1)], let K=300,T=250. The
d input scaling factors of the fuzzy controller are respectively
Rul e- base
dt
Fuzzy cont rol l er
Fig.3 the main architecture of fuzzy control system
­ R if optionli( j ) is chosenat cyclek
° ˄4˅
Δτ ik( j ) = ® f (ϕ)k
°¯ 0 otherwise
where R represents pheromone reward factor; f (ϕ )k
presents cost of the trial solution generated at cycle k. It is
noteworthy that the better the trial solution, and hence the
lower the cost, the larger the amount of pheromone added.
The stopping criterion generally used is the completion of
a certain number of cycles.
ċ)8==<&21752/6<67(0
In order to apply the ant colony algorithm into the
optimization of the fuzzy rules, a fuzzy control system should
be firstly designed. The main architecture of the system is
shown in Fig.3.
The rule-base has all fuzzy rules of the fuzzy
controller. All fuzzy rules will be optimized according to
the optimization criteria. In this paper, the fuzzy controller
has two inputs and one output. The linguistic variables of
the inputs are respectively represented by E (error) and EC
(change-in-error), and the linguistic variable of the output
is represented by U. Each of the linguistic variable has
seven linguistic values, which is set by NB, NM, NS, ZE,
PS, PM and PB. The shape of all Membership functions is
triangle, seeing in the Fig.4.
For the application of ant colony algorithm, the fuzzy rule
optimization problem should be constructed as the form G=
˄DˈLˈC˅, where D represents the set of premises; L
represents the set of choice from premise to consequence, C
is the cost set of each choice. The cost set is only associated
with the concentration of pheromone. In the process of
constructing trial solution in Fig.1, the equation (1) is used to
calculate the probability of each option, where two parameters
are set as£=0ˈ¢=1DŽ
NB NM NS ZE PS PM
1
0 algorithm is as follow:
- 10 - 8 - 6 - 4 - 2 0 2 4
Fig.4 Membership function
The control system is considered as in Fig.2. The
y
Process (plant) to be controlled will be replaced by a typical
chosen as g1=1.8, g2=4, and its output scaling factor is chosen
as h=0.5. The reference response is initialized according to
Opt i mi zat i on
cri t eri a
desired performance such as rise time, overshoot, settling time
and steady-state error, and is represented by f(t):
Every fuzzy rule in the fuzzy system is in the form of
IF E is Ai AND EC is B i THEN U is C i
There are two inputs in the system and every input has
seven fuzzy values to be chosen. Hence the total number of
rules in maximum fuzzy rule set is 49 (7h7). Because the
only output has seven fuzzy values to be chosen, the solution
space is a 49h7 matrix. The Mandani operation is considered
and the method of center of gravity is used for defuzzification
in the optimal design of fuzzy controller.
Č. THE APPLICATION AND THE RESULT
The parameters of the ant colony algorithm should be
appropriately chosen. The number of iteration
NC_MAX=200, number of ants m=40, the remaining
coefficient of pheromone ² =0.9 (chosen according to a
number of simulating tests ). The algorithm is programmed
follow the steps in Fig.1. The set of linguistic-numeric
descriptions for the input and output membership functions
will be renumbered as 0~6 so that the arrays in the program
can be used. Rule[49] represents the rule-base to be
optimized, and ´ [49][7] represents the concentration of
pheromone on the route to be chosen from each premise to the
consequent.
Running the ant colony algorithm in each sampling
period:
gConstruct trial solution: chose the consequent with the
pheromone matrix
´[49][7], construct the temporary rule-base temp[49],
calculate the real output y(kT) with the temp[49], e(kT),
ec(kT) and u(kT).
gCalculate cost: calculate the error=|y(kT)-f(kT)|, save
the temp[49] to the rule[49] when the error is the
minimum one.
gUpdate pheromone: the pheromone at every route is
updated according to the coefficient
(1-²), adding the values of ´[49][rule[49]].
When choosing the consequents according to the
concentration of pheromone, the strategy of choice in the ant
PB colony algorithm is considered. In order to apply the
algorithm better, some modifications have been made [3][11].
Based on the above, another modification has been made in
this paper so that it can be applied in the optimization of fuzzy
rule. The modification of the strategy of choice in ant colony
6 8 10
1605
 ­ arg max {τ i ( j ) }, if r ≤ p 0 ,
° τ
° k (5)
s = ® pi( j) = 7
i( j)
, else
° ¦ τ i( j )
°¯ j=0
where p 0 ∈ (0 ,1 ) , r is a random number uniformly
distributed between (0,1). p 0 is considered as a variable
relative to the iteration t, so that the search space would be
expanded and the speed of convergence has little influence. It
is useful for expanding the search space to specify p 0 a
small value in the initial period of the algorithm and for
expediting the convergence to specify p 0 a larger value in
the final period of the algorithm. One of the important part of
the ant colony algorithm is the pheromone updating, which is
relative to the evaluating criteria. The updating form of
pheromone of the formula (4) is modified as
­c if option li( j ) is chosen at cyclek
Δτ ik( j ) = ® (6)
¯0 otherwise
˄c is a constant valueˈin this paper it is valued as 20˅DŽ
The testing interface shows in Fig.5, which is
programmed with Visual C++. The result of the test shows on
the interface, The solid line is the reference response˄desired
response˅ and the dash line is the real response after the
optimization of rule-base. Fig.5a shows the result of step
response without overshoot. Fig.5b shows the result of step
response with some overshoot. The results of tests show that
the good effect of application of ant colony algorithm to
optimization of fuzzy rules.
a [J]CONTROL THEORY AND APPLICATIONS Vol.17,No.1 Feb.2000
1606
b
Fig.5 Result of step response with optimized rule-base
č. CONCLUTION
It is successful to apply the ant colony algorithm to solve
the fuzzy rule optimization problem. A feasible method is
given to design the optimal fuzzy controller without expert’s
experience. The simulating result shows that the fuzzy
controller with the optimal fuzzy rule-base has the good
performance. That is to say, Different performance
requirement of the fuzzy controller could be satisfied
according to different reference response line which the
designer set and the interrelated optimal rule-base is obtained,
However, in this paper, each of the input scaling gains and the
output scaling gain used in the optimization is a constant, so
that the optimization is limited. The next important work is to
optimize the scaling gains while the fuzzy rules is optimized.
In that case, the fuzzy controller will be optimized integrally
and has much better dynamic and static performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank professor Xincheng Li
and Dr. Changhua Ma for their helpful suggestions,
discussions and comments. Furthermore, This work was
supported by international cooperation plan of Jiangsu
provice(BZ2002055) and advanced research & development
project of Jiangsu University(JDG2003004).
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