Deriving analytical structure of a type-2 fuzzy PD/PI controller

In the past several years, research results on type-2 fuzzy control have started to emerge in the literature. None of them, however, are concerned with mathematical input-output relationship of a type-2 fuzzy controller. Establishing such relationship is important as it will deepen our understanding of type-2 fuzzy controller structures, how they function, and their advantages and drawbacks as compared to type-1 fuzzy controllers and conventional controllers (e.g., the PID controller). The availability of such structure will also lay a foundation for more rigorous theoretical analysis and design of type-2 fuzzy control systems. In this paper, we derive the mathematical input-output relation of a type-2 fuzzy PD (or PI) controller that has one of the simplest possible configurations - only two interval type-2 fuzzy sets for each input variables, four fuzzy rules with Zadeh AND operator, and four interval type-2 output fuzzy sets. We relate the resulting structure to conventional control theory and show that it actually is a PD (or PI) controller with the proportional and derivative (or integral) gains changing as the input variable values vary.