Optical implementation of fuzzy-set reasoning.

New methods of optical fuzzy-logic operations and optical fuzzy-controller synthesis are proposed and experimentally demonstrated by use of optical fan-out elements to achieve multiple imaging and polarization-space/aperture data encoding to represent fuzzy variables in optics. Sixteen fuzzy-logic operations between two inputs are achieved by use of a simple polarization-space data-encoding and kernel-operation scheme. In addition, a max-min composition-based fuzzy controller is implemented by use of an aperture-data-encoding and a double-multi-imaging approach. Our systems exhibit a high operation speed, a large information throughput, and a high signal-to-noise ratio.