Evolutionary design of a fuzzy controller for the intra-aortic balloon pump

The intra-aortic balloon pump is an implantable device that can be inflated and deflated at appropriate times to assist the performance of a weak heart. However, the control and determination of these times can be problematical. This paper reports on the development of a fuzzy controller for an intra-aortic balloon pump. The membership functions for the two controller inputs and single output are optimized with a genetic algorithm. The results over three separate runs show good convergence with many common values for the membership functions.