Hybrid Soft Computing Systems: Where Are We Going?

Soft computing is an association of computing methodologies that includes fuzzy logic, neuro-computing, evolutionary computing, and probabilistic computing. After a brief overview of Soft Computing components, we will analyze some of its most synergistic combinations. We will emphasize the development of smart algorithm-controllers, such as the use of fuzzy logic to control the parameters of evolutionary computing and, conversely, the application of evolutionary algorithms to tune fuzzy controllers. We will focus on three real-world applications of soft computing that leverage the synergism created by hybrid systems. 1 SOFT COMPUTING OVERVIEW Soft computing (SC) is a term originally coined by Zadeh to denote systems that “... exploit the tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, and partial truth to achieve tractability, robustness, low solution cost, and better rapport with reality" [1]. Traditionally SC has been comprised by four technical disciplines. The first two, probabilistic reasoning (PR) and fuzzy logic (FL) reasoning systems, are based on knowledge-driven reasoning. The other two technical disciplines, neuro computing (NC) and evolutionary computing (EC), are data-driven search and optimization approaches [2]. Although we have not reached a consensus regarding the scope of SC or the nature of this association [3], the emergence of this new discipline is undeniable [4]. This paper is the reduced version of a much more extensive coverage of this topic, which can be found in [5]. 2 SC COMPONENTS AND TAXONOMY