Neural networks that learn from fuzzy if-then rules

An architecture for neural networks that can handle fuzzy input vectors is proposed, and learning algorithms that utilize fuzzy if-then rules as well as numerical data in neural network learning for classification problems and for fuzzy control problems are derived. The learning algorithms can be viewed as an extension of the backpropagation algorithm to the case of fuzzy input vectors and fuzzy target outputs. Using the proposed methods, linguistic knowledge from human experts represented by fuzzy if-then rules and numerical data from measuring instruments can be integrated into a single information processing system (classification system or fuzzy control system). It is shown that the scheme works well for simple examples