Development of a general purpose optical fuzzy computer

A general purpose optical fuzzy computing system is proposed. This computing system consists of 5 modules, 2 image transmitters and a controller. The modules are a MAX/MIN module, a SUP/THROUGH module, a NOT/THROUGH module, an image converter, and an image memory. The operation of each new device is easily changed to a binary operation by an electric control signal represented by logical `1´ and `0´ values. The calculated membership function is represented by an optical image. Using the optical image, the system can deal with the data in parallelism and high speed. This paper illustrates the fundamental diagram of the general purpose optical fuzzy computer and the devices composing this system, the MAX/MIN module, the SUP/THROUGH module, NOT/THROUGH module and the multiplexer and the demultiplexer that are the image transmitters