Providing PRTools with fuzzy rule-based classifiers

This paper first reviews the state-of-the-art of fuzzy rule-based classifiers (FRBCs), then it discusses how to implement an FRBC under the Pattern Recognition Toolbox (PRTools), the de-facto standard toolbox for classification in Matlab. Such an implementation, called frbc, allows for a straightforward comparison of frbc with other classifiers already available under the PRTools. Furthermore, frbc can easily be used and combined with any other general-purpose function already available in PRTools. In this way, e.g., it becomes really easy to perform many types of feature selection, based on the accuracy achieved by frbc on the subset of features at hand. Another useful feature is the capability to export each FRBC generated by frbc as a standard Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) structure used within the Matlab Fuzzy Logic Toolbox (FLT): this allows comparisons/validations, visual inspection of the rule base, etc. In the experimental part we first assess the correctness of the implementation, by reproducing results existing in the literature. Then we show some examples of usage of frbc, combined with existing PRTools functions.