A type-2 fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm

This paper presents a type-2 fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm that is an extension of the conventional fuzzy C-means algorithm. In our proposed method, the membership values for each pattern are extended as type-2 fuzzy memberships by assigning membership grades to the type-1 memberships. In doing so, cluster centers that are estimated by type-2 memberships may converge to a more desirable location than cluster centers obtained by a type-1 FCM method in the presence of noise. Experimental results are given to show the effectiveness of our method.