Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE

International Conference on Control Applications

Trieste, Italy 1-4 September 1998 TM04

Adaptive Geno-Fuzzy Control of Process Plants via Perpetual Evolution

Athula Rajapakse’, Kazuo Furuta, Shunsuke Kondo
Department of Quantum Engineering and Systems Science, The University of Tokyo
7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 113, Japan
‘Email: athulaC3rokoh.gen.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract evaluations. Dumitrache and Buiu [2] have developed a

This paper presents an adaptive mechanism based on
genetic algorithms for the basic fuzzy controller. The
concept of “Perpetual Evolution” is proposed as a novel
strategy for using genetic search to tune fuzzy controllers
in real-time. In this, a population of potential fuzzy
coritrollers evolves continuously over the time
responding to changes in the environment. At a given
time, the best fitting controller in the latest population is
accepted as the solution. Adaptability for any real-time
process changes is achieved by using an online neural
network model for evaluating trial solutions. The
proposed technique is demonstrated through simulations
by applying to control a chemical reactor.
1. Introduction
Although the basic fuzzy logic controller (FLC) has
deinonstrated to be robust in dealing with complex and
poorly modeled processes, it has no mechanisms for
adapting to real time plant changes [I]. Consequently it
may exhibit poor performance or even instability under
variations that result from non-linear andor time varying
characteristics of the process. In recent years there has
been much interest and progress in incorporating
intelligent features, i.e. adaptability, learning ability and
self-organizing ability into fuzzy controllers to cope up
with such situations. Hybridization of fuzzy logic with
other soft computing techniques such as artificial neural
networks (ANN) and genetic algorithms (GA) has been
advocated as a paradigm for realization of intelligent
control systems [I].
Genetic algorithms are domain independent powerful
search techniques that work on a coding of the
parameters to be optimized. Search is carried out using a
population of trails representing possible solutions to the
problem. Successive populations are generated by
applying biomimetic operations such as reproduction,
crossover, and mutation. Search is guided by an
ob-jective assessment of each trail. A thorough review of
genetic algorithms in control can be found in [3].
Number of studies reports the use of GA for design and
opitimization of fuzzy logic controllers [4,5,6]. However,
application of GA for real-time adaptation of fuzzy
coiitrollers has been some what restrained. This is mainly
duc: to the time taken by GA for computation that could
be painfully long in some cases [ 3 ] . Karr and Jain [7]
have studied the applicability of GA for real-time
adaptation of fuzzy controllers in water level, pH and
inverted pendulum control problems. They have used
micro GA, a special kind of genetic algorithm which uses
small populations to reduce the computing time and
relied on fixed analytical simulation models for
geno-fuzzy controller for a servo system. They proposed
to use an algebraic model of the fuzzy controller as way
to minimize the number of tuning parameters and the
computation time. Further, they suggest using two other
GA systems to determine the structure of the algebraic
model and to obtain a simulation model.
In this paper, we propose an adaptation mechanism for a
FLC using genetic search techniques. The computing
time available for the genetic search is efficiently utilized
via a continuous evolution process, which we named as
“Perpetual Evolution”. This is an ever-living process of
evolution during which the GA’s goal and hence the
evaluation criteria are dynamically adjusted to suit for
the immediate control task at the each control step. The
evolution is continued for as many as possible number of
generations within a given control step and the best
fitting FLC available at the end is accepted as the
solution. Further, we propose to use an ANN model for
evaluating competing FLCs when an analytical model of
the process is not available. This, in addition to
facilitating the evaluation of FLCs, will enhance the
adaptive capability of the controller through on-line
learning of any unmodeled phenomena.
The next three sections of the paper present the structure
of the proposed control system, design of fuzzy logic
controllers using genetic algorithms, and the idea of
perpetual evolution. It will be followed by the simulation
results and concluding remarks.
2. Architecture of the Proposed Control System
Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the proposed
adaptive control system. The basic building blocks in the
control system are: on-line neural network model of the
process, fixed and variable fuzzy logic controllers and
GA tuner. The neural network model updates its
parameters on-line to track any changes in the process.
CA tuner uses the neural network simulation model for
evaluating the fitness of competing fuzzy controllers
produced via genetic operations. Parameters of the
Fig. 1 Structure of the proposed adaptive control system

01998 IEEE
0-~7803-4104-X/98/$10.00

797
variable FLC are replaced by those found by the genetic
search, if they fit better for the current control task than
the existing parameters. The purpose of the fixed FLC,
which is designed off-line, is to ensure the stability.
3. Design of Fuzzy Controllers Using Genetic
Algorithms
I - FUZZY Controller -1
I U U I
Fig. 2 Fuzzy logic controller
Figure 2 illustrates arrangement of a fuzzy controller.
The two inputs to the fuzzy controller are control error
e and the rate of change of control error e . The output
of the fuzzy controller is the input to the controlled
process, LI. In addition to the fuzzifier, rule base,
inference engine, and defuzzifier, it needs a set of scaling
factors to normalize the input and output data. Usually,
the output of the defuzzifier is directly input to the plant.
However, the configuration shown in Fig 2 has the
characteristic of a parameter time varying PID controller
due to the integration term at the output and exhibit
superior performance [SI.
The complete design of the fuzzy controller involves
deterinination of the scaling factors, input and output
fuzzy partitions, membership functions, and the rule
base. The most straightforward approach is to define
rules and membership functions subjectively using expert
knowledge and testing the design for specified
performance. This however, is a difficult task in most
cases due to inadequate control knowledge. Recently,
CAS have been successfully used to obtain optimum
parameters for FLCs. This requires representation of the
parameters to be searched in a coded string. A suitable
objective f’unction is required to evaluate the fitness of
competing FLCs represented as a population of strings.
Usually, fitness is coinputed as a weighted sum of the
suimnations of squared errors and efforts when the FLC
is used to control a simulation model of the actual
process.
4. Perpetual Evolution as a Strategy for Real-time
Adaptation of Fuzzy Controllers
Once the structure and scaling factors are fixed, the
response of a fuzzy controller can be fine-tuned via the
adjustment of membership functions. Genetic algorithms,
which were used to locate optimal membership functions
during the off-!he design, are difficult to use for real-
time adaptation due to associated long computation
times. However, we noticed that faster convergence can
be achieved, if the genetic search is initiated with a
population having high average fitness. It was also
observed that when GA is used to optimize FLC
parameters, much of the coinputation time is used for the
simulations during the fitness evaluation. Further, we
798
considered that the purpose of using GA in a real-time
application is for learning in contrast to its traditional
use, optimization. Therefore, any good solution found
within the available time would be acceptable though it
may not be the optimum solution. Based on the above
observations, we propose a new strategy for effectively
using the available computing time. Instead of
formulating a separate genetic search to locate
membership functions at each control time step, a
perpetual evolutionary process that continues through
control steps is maintained. Appropriate membership
functions are located at each control step by dynamically
focusing the evaluation criteria of this continuous
evolutionary process on “immediate control task”. At a
given time point, the available best fitting individual for
the current task is accepted as the solution. Figure 3
shows an outline of the proposed algorithm. The goal of
the genetic search changes with the time responding to
changes in the environment. These changes in the goal
may induce an acceleration or deceleration in the
evolutionary process.
If the process error becomes greater than a specified
threshold, adaptive process starts causing the activation
of search. When activated, GA tuner gets information
about the current plant status and modifies the objective
of the search to suit for current control task. This is
achieved by modifying the starting point, the reference
trajectory, and period of time (I”,,,,,)for controlling the
simulation model during the fitness evaluation. Then the
number of generations to evolve in the present control
time step (G,rie,,)is chosen depending on the selected
simulation length. To comprehend this, see Fig 4, which
illustrates a possible choice of reference trajectory. If the
current operating point is at point OP,, which is far from
the set point, we are interested in a controller that can
begin
set index g=O
initialize the population P(g)
initialize fixed-flc with the off-line design of FLC
initialize variable_flc with the off-line design of FLC
while (plant in operation) do
begin
if (error > errorm,”)
begin
get the current plant status
set starting point and simulation scenario
set simulation length TSi,
set number of generation for this control step Gstep
evaluate P(g) for current control task
set index g’=O
while (g’c G S e , )do
begin
g g+1, g’=g’+1
select P(g) from P(g-1)
recombine P(g)
evaluate P(g) for current control task
end
select the best Individual p
evaluate variable-flc for current control task
evaluate fixed-flc for current control task
iffitness(p) > fitness(variab1e-flc) then
begin
replace variable-flc by p
end
compute fitness(variab1e-flc) / fitness(fixed-flc)
end
end
Fig. 3 Algorithm for adaptive fuzzy control
bring the plant as quickly as possible towards the set
point. So in such a situation the simulation length can be
restricted to T\ir7L!.
On the other hand, if the plant is
operating at point OP3 , which is very close to the set
point, we are interested in a controller that is capable of
stabilizing the plant at the set point. In this case an
extended simulation time (ex. TlLnz3) is required to
adcquatcly test the fitness of a prospective controller.
T
.,'
plant set poin!....-0 O P ~
,, 7 ....
. . ..... .
F i g 5 Chemical reactor system used for simulations
is controlled by adjusting the heater's power level.
Dynamic equations for this nonlinear process are
obtained from [9].
The design of complete control system comprise of the
following major steps: identification experiment to
obtain ANN training data, development of neural
network model, design of fixed fuzzy controller by using
CA off-line, and the design of CA tuner. It should be
noted that the development of ANN model itself is an
imposing task for a complex system, though that topic is
not discussed in this paper.
. .. . . Design of fixed fuzzy controller
I, The standard genetic algorithm was used to find the
parameters for the fixed fuzzy controller, including
scaling factors, number of fuzzy partitions for error and
error rate, and the membership function parameters. The
coding scheme used resulted in a real valued string of 39
bit positions. Crossover and mutation operations
described in [4] were used on the real valued strings with
probabilities of 0.99 and 0.02 respectively. Population
size was set to 100. GA was terminated after 100
generations. Previously (obtained neural network model
was used for evaluation with thc following objective
function.
c
v= ..
1 1
I =o ,=I1
+ (F, - N e . N , )
Where r is the reference, y is the plant output, U is the
controller output and N e and N , are the number of
fuzzy partitions of the inputs e and e respectively. F,, F2
and F3 are constants. After setting an upper limit of 11
for N e and N e , F3 was set to 121, which is the
maximum possible nuniber of rules in a controller.
Proper values for F , and. F2 could be selected only after
few trail runs.
Design of GA tuner
The variable fuzzy controller was initialized with the
parameters found for the fixed fuzzy controller in the
previous step. In our experiments, adaptation was
restricted only to membership functions, keeping the
structure and the scaling factors fixed. When the bit
positions for scaling factors and the number of input
partitions are omitted, the length of a chromosome
reduces to 33 bits. In order to minimize the computation
time, population size was set to 30, takmg into account
the guidelines suggested in [3] for minimum population
size. The probabilities of crossover and mutation were
set as 0.99 and 0.02 respectively. Many control
performance specifications such as overshoot, rise-time,
settling time, etc. are specified related to the step
response. Therefore, a reference trajectory similar to that
shown in Fig 4, which include two step changes in the set
point, was used for evaluating the fitness of competing
controllers. Simulation length, set point changes and
number of generations per control step were chosen as
given in Table 1 for the ;simulation experiments.
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Fable 1 Choice of T,,, and GIrep
Error (e) Simulation Set point changes
length (Ar)mollm3
0 5<e<6 0 +5 at 150, -15 at 225
60<e<110 t 5 at 150
11 O<e None
Simulation results
In the first simulation experiment, the final output of the
controller was determined as following. If the fitness of
fixed FLC is greater than that of the variable FLC for the
current task, the output of fixed FLC is applied to the
plant. Otherwise the output of variable FLC is applied to
the plant. This appeared to be the most logical approach
in the first instance. During the experiment, two product
concentration set point changes of +21 and +I5 were
effected at 800 inin and 1800 min respectively. In
addition, disturbances were introduced by increasing the
feed flow rate from 0.5 to 0.7 at 200 min and then by
decreasing the feed flow rate to 0.45 at 1100 min. Figure
6 shows results obtained from the simulations. The
curves named “without feed flow change”, “static”, and
“adaptive” are referred to the variation of product
concentration when controlled only using the fixed FLC
for the case of no disturbances, controlled using only the
fixed controller, and controlled with the proposed
adaptive control system respectively. Contrary to our
expectation, the adaptive control system showed very
poor performance introducing lot of oscillation into the
570 1 560
plant output, though it appears to be trying to compensate
Gem for disturbances.
per step These oscillations in the process output may have caused
by the process of adaptation itself, when changes occur
in the controller parameters. Unlike iii adaptive schemes
where parameter changes occur gradually, GA may select
a completely different parameter set for the next control
step, if it shows a better fitness for the current control
task. The fixed FLC was made used to suppress this
effect by computing the final output of the control system
as given below.
1.1 = O.U/i,& + (1 - Q).uvarLnb,e (7)
1
a = l+[fit(variable_fc)lfit(fixed- f c ) ] (8)
The second simulation was a repeat of the first
experiment but with the new scheme for computing the
final controller output. The simulation results are shown
in Fig 7. The names of the curves have the same meaning
as in the previous case. It can be seen that the adaptive
control system shows very nice performance this time.
Performance at the points where feed flow changes were
introduced has significantly improved over that of the
nonadaptive controller. Step response of the system has
also improved with less overshoot and slightly shorter
rise time. A good coordination between the fixed and
variable FLCs is evident where variable FLC assists to
improve the performance of fixed FLC while fixed FLC
helps to smooth out the response of variable FLC.
570
0

E 550
1

v
540
4 530
520
510
0 400 800 1200 1600 2000
0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 time (min)
time ( m i n ) ...........,.“,, no UA change static -adaptive
ll__l

no feed flow change ---static -adaptive

Fig. 8 Variation of product concentration in experiment 3
Fig 6 Variation of product concentration in Experiment 1

570 7

0 400 800 1200 1600 2000

0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 time (mi.)
time (min)
-alpha
set point --+ controller
UA
updates
- no feed flow change static -adaptive
Fig. 9 Variation of UA, set point, CL, and instances of variable FLC
Fig 7 Variation of product concentration in experiment 2 parameter updates during experiment 3.

800
In the third experiment, an unmodeled disturbance was
introduced by changing the value of heat transfer
coefl‘icieiit between the reactor and heating water system
(deiioted by UA). Performance was examined under two
types of variations in UA: first a gradual reduction of UA
at a rate of about 0.01% per control step was introduced
during the time interval from 100-350 min, and then a
step drop of 16% was introduced at 1200 min. Further,
two product concentration set point changes of -15 and -
20 were effected at 800 min and 1800 min respectively.
The results of this experiment are shown in Figs 8 and 9.
The curve named as “without UA change” refers to the
case of using fixed FLC for controlling the plant without
disturbance. Other two curves have the same meanings as
in the previous cases. Once again the response of the
adaptive controller show improved performance
compared to the non-adaptive case with respect to
disturbance rejection. However, at the last set point
change, adaptive controller gives a slightly larger
overshoot. This experiment shows the importance of the
on-line ANN model and its ability to learn unmodeled
phenomena that occur in the process. The variation of a
shown in Fig 9 suggests that there is more contribution to
controller output from variable FLC during the
transients. The instances when the parameters of variable
FLC were updated by GA tuner are shown by “+” marks.
Concentration of “-t”marks around the transients also
suggests the effectiveness of the proposed GA tuner.
In application of the proposed adaptive control system
for a particular process, the control engineer has to
develop a proper scheme for evaluating trial fuzzy
coritrollcrs. The number of generations per control time
step has to be specified considering the sampling rate and
the speed of the control computer. Simulation results
indicate that the proposed adaptive technique works
satislactory even with the extremely small values chosen
for Cne,, (2-4 generations compared to over 100
generations in traditional GA). We expect improvement
in the performance if some memory element is employed
in CA tuner to keep copies of best performing
individuals classified according to some criteria and
introduce those into the population under similar
situations.
6. Conclusion
In this study, the objective was to utilize GAS as a tool to
provide real-time adaptive capabilities to a fuzzy control
sys#tem. Architecture of an adaptive control system
consisting of an on-line ANN process model, a GA tuner,
a fixed FLC and a variable FLC was presented. Perpetual
evolution of a population of competing FLC’s using
dy nainic evaluation criteria was introduced as a strategy
for efficiently using the available computing time when
using GA for real-time control. The proposed technique
was used to develop a GA tuner which alters the
membership functions of a FLC in real-time and its
effectiveness was investigated by using this system to
control a sirnulation model of a chemical process. The
sirnulation results, which showed improved control
performance with the proposed adaptive control system,
indicate that GAS can be successfully used to provide
FLCs with real-time adaptive capabilities in the proposed
80 1
framework. However, there are numerous aspects of this
technology that must be further investigated.
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