Fuzzy Controller

Fuzzy Controller: A Narrative Programming Tool for Designers

Humphrey Yang

Designers describe the behaviors of an object with a set of rules, yet in computers rely on explicit representations- signs, numbers and formula- that are difficult and unintuitive for designers to understand. The deduction to model the behavior as formula is alien to designers and the explicit modeling cannot capture the fuzziness of human thinking. As a result, the Fuzzy Controller is my attempt to allow designers to program objects more naturally and narratively. In a sense, users "train" the controller to convert inputs into outputs by defining a set of rules.

In conventional logic is binary and does not capture sell the ambiguity in human thoughts. For instance, we would say the weather is rather hot (65% Hot and 30% Very Hot) at 28 degree celsius and quite hot (30% Hot and 75% Very Hot) at 28.5 degree celsius, and binary logic will fail to capture this subtle change. Thus, the adoption of fuzzy logic is essential to parsing human language in design.

To use this controller, users must first define the inputs and the rules. The more a certain rule is emphasized (repeated), the more significant it becomes. The controller parses the the narrative rules with a deterministic logic and translate them into fuzzy math representations. When given an input, the controller will translate and subject them to the resolved rules compute the corresponding output with fuzzy math operations.

This controller has a broad range of applications, from motor control to programming behaviors. It s particularly useful when the user cannot explicitly and numerically model the relations between inputs and outputs.