This book is a collection of some of the papers that were presented during a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues" that was held in Kusadasi, Turkey during August 24- 28, 1992. Attendance at this workshop was mainly by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community. Many of the participants were internationally recognized leaders in the topic of the workshop. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together a highly distinguished group of people with the express purpose of debating where the issues of safety, reliability and maintainability place direct and tangible constraints on the development of intelligent systems. As a consequence, one of the major debating points in the ARW was the definition of intelligence, intelligent behaviour and their relation to complex dynamic systems. Two major conclusions evolved from the ARW are: 1. A continued need exists to develop formal, theoretical frameworks for the architecture of such systems, together with a reflection on the concept of intelligence. 2. There is a need to focus greater attention to the role that the human play in controlling intelligent systems. The workshop began by considering the typical features of an intelligent system. The complexity associated with multi-resolutional architectures was then discussed, leading to the identification of a necessity for the use of a combinatorial synthesis/approach. This was followed by a session on human interface issues.

Soft computing is a consortium of computing methodologies that provide a foundation for the conception, design, and deployment of intelligent systems and aims to formalize the human ability to make rational decisions in an environment of uncertainty and imprecision. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in 1996 on soft computing and its applications. The distinguished contributors consider the principal constituents of soft computing, namely fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, genetic computing, and probabilistic reasoning, the relations between them, and their fusion in industrial applications. Two areas emphasized in the book are how to achieve a synergistic combination of the main constituents of soft computing and how the combination can be used to achieve a high Machine Intelligence Quotient.

This book addresses some of the challenges suffered by the well-known and robust sliding-mode control paradigm. The authors show how the fusion of fuzzy systems with sliding-mode controllers can alleviate some of these problems and promote applicability. Fuzzy systems used as soft switches eliminate high-frequency signal oscillations and can substantially lower the noise sensitivity of sliding-mode controllers. The amount of a priori knowledge required concerning the nominal structure and parameters of a nonlinear system is also shown to be much reduced by exploiting the general function-approximation property of fuzzy systems so as to use them as identifiers. The main features of this book include: * a review of various existing structures of sliding-mode fuzzy control; * a guide to the fundamental mathematics of sliding-mode fuzzy controllers and their stability analysis; * state-of-the-art procedures for the design of a sliding-mode fuzzy controller; * source codes including MATLAB (R) and Simulink (R) codes illustrating the simulation of these controllers, particularly the adaptive controllers; * a short bibliography for each chapter for readers interested in learning more on a particular subject; and * illustrative examples and simulation results to support the main claims made in the text. Academic researchers and graduate students interested in the control of nonlinear systems and particularly those working in sliding-mode controller design will find this book a valuable source of comparative information on existing controllers and ideas for the development of new ones.

This book addresses some of the challenges suffered by the well-known and robust sliding-mode control paradigm. The authors show how the fusion of fuzzy systems with sliding-mode controllers can alleviate some of these problems and promote applicability. Fuzzy systems used as soft switches eliminate high-frequency signal oscillations and can substantially lower the noise sensitivity of sliding-mode controllers. The amount of a priori knowledge required concerning the nominal structure and parameters of a nonlinear system is also shown to be much reduced by exploiting the general function-approximation property of fuzzy systems so as to use them as identifiers. The main features of this book include: * a review of various existing structures of sliding-mode fuzzy control; * a guide to the fundamental mathematics of sliding-mode fuzzy controllers and their stability analysis; * state-of-the-art procedures for the design of a sliding-mode fuzzy controller; * source codes including MATLAB (R) and Simulink (R) codes illustrating the simulation of these controllers, particularly the adaptive controllers; * a short bibliography for each chapter for readers interested in learning more on a particular subject; and * illustrative examples and simulation results to support the main claims made in the text. Academic researchers and graduate students interested in the control of nonlinear systems and particularly those working in sliding-mode controller design will find this book a valuable source of comparative information on existing controllers and ideas for the development of new ones.

Soft computing is a consortium of computing methodologies that provide a foundation for the conception, design, and deployment of intelligent systems and aims to formalize the human ability to make rational decisions in an environment of uncertainty and imprecision. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in 1996 on soft computing and its applications. The distinguished contributors consider the principal constituents of soft computing, namely fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, genetic computing, and probabilistic reasoning, the relations between them, and their fusion in industrial applications. Two areas emphasized in the book are how to achieve a synergistic combination of the main constituents of soft computing and how the combination can be used to achieve a high Machine Intelligence Quotient.

This book is a collection of some of the papers that were presented during a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Intelligent Systems: Safety, Reliability and Maintainability Issues" that was held in Kusadasi, Turkey during August 24- 28, 1992. Attendance at this workshop was mainly by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community. Many of the participants were internationally recognized leaders in the topic of the workshop. The purpose of the ARW was to bring together a highly distinguished group of people with the express purpose of debating where the issues of safety, reliability and maintainability place direct and tangible constraints on the development of intelligent systems. As a consequence, one of the major debating points in the ARW was the definition of intelligence, intelligent behaviour and their relation to complex dynamic systems. Two major conclusions evolved from the ARW are: 1. A continued need exists to develop formal, theoretical frameworks for the architecture of such systems, together with a reflection on the concept of intelligence. 2. There is a need to focus greater attention to the role that the human play in controlling intelligent systems. The workshop began by considering the typical features of an intelligent system. The complexity associated with multi-resolutional architectures was then discussed, leading to the identification of a necessity for the use of a combinatorial synthesis/approach. This was followed by a session on human interface issues.