Decomposition of a complex fuzzy controller for the truck-and-trailer reverse parking problem

The use of fuzzy logic has, in the last twenty years, become standard practice in the field of control. The reason lies in the fuzzy logic's ability to relatively quickly transfer uncertain experience and knowledge about the observed object's behaviour into the process of decision making. Nevertheless, one of the biggest problems that arises when using a fuzzy approach is the large number of fuzzy rules that have to be processed in order to produce one decision (i.e. one control output). The number of rules in a fuzzy controller primarily originates from the number of input variables that are entering the decision process and one possible solution for decreasing it is to use the method of decomposition. Its main goal is to implement the equivalent control functionality with a hierarchy of simpler fuzzy controllers. Their main characteristic is a lower number of input variables, which as a consequence leads to a smaller number of fuzzy rules. In our paper we apply the decomposition approach to the classical complex control case of the Truck-and-Trailer (T&T) reverse parking control problem. In such cases the implementation of control using only one fuzzy controller is very complex and the existing solutions, in some details, even deviate from the classical fuzzy approach. Our solution is, on the other hand, based only on the uncertain knowledge about the behaviour of the T&T driver and the results achieved are even better than those achieved by using the existing solutions.