Adaptive Rule Weights in Neuro-Fuzzy Systems

Neuro-fuzzy systems have recently gained a lot of interest in research and application. They are approaches that use learning techniques derived from neural networks to learn fuzzy systems from data. A very simple ad hoc approach to apply a learning algorithm to a fuzzy system is to use adaptive rule weights. In this paper, we argue that rule weights have a negative effect on the linguistic interpretation of a fuzzy system, and thus remove one of the key advantages for applying fuzzy systems. We show how rule weights can be equivalently replaced by modifying the fuzzy sets of a fuzzy system. If this is done, the actual effects that rule weights have on a fuzzy rule base become visible. We demonstrate at a simple example the problems of using rule weights. We suggest that neuro-fuzzy learning should be better implemented by algorithms that modify the fuzzy sets directly without using rule weights.