Perspectives of fuzzy control: lights and shadows

This paper analyses the situation and trends in the application of fuzzy logic in control problems. Two main streams are considered: the reasoning approach, to develop control applications without sophisticated modelling effort, attracting practitioners in a similar way (and sometimes just mimicking) to classical PIU control, and the universal approximation paradigm, providing a way to prove stability and performance guarantee, as a requirement in the academic arena. Some specific techniques are reviewed and some conclusions about the complementarity and interest of any control design approach are drafted.