Apparatus and method for automatically creating membership functions.

摘要

Membership functions are capable of being created with ease even by a person whose is not an expert or skilled individual. Data Ai SIMILAR Bi sensed by sensors 11 SIMILAR 13 and synthesized data Mi are stored in a memory device 31 in correlation with identification codes Di of objects. The results of comparing the "tastiness" of an object Di with that of an object Dj are entered from an input unit 15 and stored in the memory device 31. An evaluating unit 32 arrays the results of comparison in accordance with inequality symbols and assigns evaluation values to these results in the order of the array. A histogram creating unit 33 generates a histogram by plotting each item of input data Ai SIMILAR Mi along a horizontal axis and plotting the corresponding evaluation values along a vertical axis. Whether or not a function obtained by connecting the peaks of the histogram is appropriate as a basic function for creation of a membership function is judged by a judging unit 34 from the viewpoint of whether the function has a unique peak or a variance about the peak that is small. A function judged to be appropriate is normalized by a generating unit 35, thereby generating a membership function.