Granular Computing - The Concept of Generalized Constraint-Based Computation

Basically, granular computing is a mode of computing in which the objects of computation are granular variables. Let X be a variable which takes values in a universe of discourse, U. Informally, a granule is a clump of elements of U which are drawn together by indistinguishability, similarity or proximity. For example, an interval is a granule; so is a fuzzy interval; so is a gaussian distribution; and so is a cluster of elements of U. A granular variable is a variable which takes granules as values. If G is value of X, then G is referred to as a granular value of X. If G is a singleton, then G is a singular value of X. A linguistic variable is a granular variable whose values are labeled with words drawn from a natural language. For example, if X is temperature, then 101.3 is a singular value of temperature, while “high” is a granular (linguistic) value of temperature.