Fuzzy control of a hovercraft platform

Abstract A great majority of current applications of fuzzy logic are in fuzzy expert control systems. The candidate systems for fuzzy expert control can be characterized as systems that possess complex or unmodeled dynamics, high dimensionality, many interacting variables, system perturbations, or a combination of any of these. The hovercraft is one such system. The complexities that exist in hovercraft control arise because of the dual requirements of maintaining lift and maneuverability, as well as stability. Using fuzzy logic, the difficulties in both the design and the application of the control process are well managed. This paper demonstrates this through the implementation of the design and application of a fuzzy controller for stabilizing the response of a simple hovercraft platform. The physical platform constructed as a testbed is described, along with the associated control hardware. This is followed by a discussion of the fuzzy rule-based system development which resulted in a fuzzy controller using a total of twelve rules for achieving platform stability.