A new hybrid approach for plant monitoring and diagnostics combining type-2 fuzzy logic and fractal theory

We describe in this paper a new approach for plant monitoring and diagnostics using type-2 fuzzy logic and fractal theory. The concept of the fractal dimension is used to measure the complexity of the time series of relevant variables for the process. A set of type-2 fuzzy rules is used to represent the knowledge for monitoring the process. In the type-2 fuzzy rules, the fractal dimension is used as a linguistic variable to help in recognizing specific patterns in the measured data. The fuzzy-fractal approach has been applied before in problems of financial time series prediction and for other types of problems, but now it is proposed to the monitoring of plants using type-2 fuzzy logic. We also compare the results of the type-2 fuzzy logic approach with the results of using only a traditional type-1 approach. Experimental results show a significant improvement in the monitoring ability with the type-2 fuzzy logic approach.