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U. of Salford

Circumventing the fuzzy type reduction for autonomous vehicle controller

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Fuzzy type-2 controllers can easily deal with systems nonlinearity and utilise humans’ expertise to solve many complex control problems; they are also very good at processing uncertainty, which exists in many robotic systems, such as autonomous vehicles. However, their computational cost is high, especially at the type reduction stage. In this research, it is aimed to reduce the computation cost of the type reduction stage, thus to facilitate faster performance speed and increase the number of actions able to be operated in one microprocessor. Proposed here are adaptive integration principles with a binary successive search technique to locate the straight or semi-straight segments of a fuzzy set, thus to use them in achieving faster weighted average computation. This computation is very important because it runs frequently in many type reductions. A variable adaptation rate is suggested during the type reduction iterations to reduce the computation cost further. The influence of the proposed approaches on the fuzzy type-2 controller’s error has been mathematically analysed and then experimentally measured using a wall-following behaviour, which is the most important action for many autonomous vehicles. The resultant execution time-gain of the proposed technique has reached to 200%. This evaluated with respect to the execution time of the original, unmodified, type reduction procedure. This study develops a new accelerated version of the enhanced Karnik-Mendel type reducer by using better initialisations and better indexing scheme. The resulting performance time-gain reached 170%, with respect to the original version. A further cut in the type reduction time is achieved by proposing a One-Go type reduction procedure. This technique can reduce multiple sets altogether in one pass, thus eliminating much of the redundant calculations needed to carry out the reduction individually. All the proposed type reduction enhancements were evaluated in terms of their execution time-gain and performance error using every possible fuzzy firing level combination. Tests were then performed using a real autonomous vehicle, navigates in a relatively complex arena field with acute, right, obtuse, and reflex angled corners, to assure evaluating wide variety of operation conditions. A simplified state hold technique using Schmitt-trigger principles and dynamic sense pattern control was suggested and implemented to assure small rule base size and to obtain more accurate evaluation of the type reduction stages.

Degree

thesis:*
Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral (Level 8)
Year dc:date.issued
2026

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Al-Rikabi, WRI

Rights

Language dc:language
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Identifier
oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1390862
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1390862

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
U. of Salford
Base URL
salford-repository.worktribe.com/oaiprovider
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Al-Rikabi, WRI. Circumventing the fuzzy type reduction for autonomous vehicle controller. Doctoral (Level 8) thesis, 2026.