Fuzzy opinion dynamics

The problem of reaching an agreement in a multiagent system has been widely investigated. Opinion Dynamics is a similar problem where agents are assumed to interact in order to reach an agreement on their opinion. The key aspect of this formulation is that the time-varying network topology describing the interaction among agents is defined according the closeness of their opinion. This model aims to describe the process which takes place when human beings work together to reach an agreement on their standpoints. A well-established approach is to consider the opinion of each human being through a numeric value. However, this model does not embody the inherent uncertainty of the human reasoning process. Indeed, the complex facets of human opinions, often expressed in linguistic ways, are heavily affected by vagueness and ambiguity. In this paper, resorting to the fuzzy theory, a framework to model the agreement of agents with vague opinions is provided. This represents a generalization of the original opinion dynamics modeling. Similarities with both the consensus and the original opinion dynamics problems are presented.