Patent Document ID: 20020052857
Application ID: 09969500
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. An optimized method of computing the value of the degree of membership of a fuzzy variable defined within a universe of discourse that is discreted into a finite number of points by way of a membership function thereof, wherein the membership function is quantified into a finite p number of levels corresponding to a finite number of degrees of truth, and is stored by way of a characteristic value of each subset of fuzzy variable values being all mirrored in one value of said degree of membership (&agr;) corresponding to one of said levels, said computing method comprising: generating a binary sequence of the following type: N&equals;100... 0, 110... 0, 111... 0,..., 111... 1; generating an address signal from the bits in said binary sequence; reading the contents of the memory storing the membership functions on the occurrence of each address signal to obtain a characteristic value; comparing said characteristic value with the value of a fuzzy input variable; the foregoing steps being repeated until a characteristic value is found that is equal to or greater than the value of the fuzzy input variable, the degree of membership sought being correlated with the address value (ADD) of the characteristic value according to the following relation: &agr;&equals;ADD when ADD&lE;2 p −1, and &agr;&equals;ADD−2 p &plus;1 when ADD>2 p −1.