ABSTRACT
Soft computing represents one of the newest fields in the area of computational intelligence. It employs state-of-the-art computational tools to deal effectively with systems characterized by complex structuring and ill-defined dynamics. These tools involve recently developed computational techniques based on fuzzy set theory, connectionist modeling, and evolutionary computation. Depending on the type of application, these tools could be used in either integrated or stand alone schemes. This chapter represents an overview on the fundamental compo nents needed to design intelligent machines based on the tools of soft computing. Such systems will be able to take advantage of knowledge represented in lin guistic terms, learn from past knowledge gained by the system, and have the ca pabilities of using state-of-the-art evolutionary computation to optimize some of their operations.
