Fusion of soft computing and hard computing for large-scale plants: an overview

The design of control systems for large-scale and complex industrial plants involves numerous trade-off problems, such as costs, quality, environmental impact, safety, reliability, accuracy, and robustness. Some of these parameters are even conflicting. Thus, the use of a multidiscipline approach is suggested to satisfy these requirements in an acceptable and well-balanced manner, and a fusion of soft computing and hard computing appears to be a natural and practical choice. Although the state-of-the-art soft computing technology has distinguished features, the use of soft computing technology would be ineffective, if it is improperly fused with conventional hard computing technology and control processes. Proper fusion is key to success, and a general model of fusion is worth examining. In this paper, through a survey of published literature, a general fusion model and fusion topologies are shown at the system level as well as at the algorithm level.