FUZZY COGNITIVE MAPS FOR PATTERN RECOGNITION APPLICATIONS

Abstract

A first attempt to incorporate Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), in pattern classification applications is performed in this paper. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, as an illustrative causative representation of modeling and manipulation of complex systems, can be used to model the behavior of any system. By transforming a pattern classification problem into a problem of discovering the way the sets of patterns interact with each other and with the classes that they belong to, we could describe the problem in terms of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. More precisely, some FCM architectures are introduced and studied with respect to their pattern recognition abilities. An efficient novel hybrid classifier is proposed as an alternative classification structure, which exploits both neural networks and FCMs to ensure improved classification capabilities. Appropriate experiments with four well-known benchmark classification problems and a typical computer vision application establish the usefulness of the Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, in a pattern recognition research field. Moreover, the present paper introduces the use of more flexible FCMs by incorporating nodes with adaptively adjusted activation functions. This advanced feature gives more degrees of freedom in the FCM structure to learn and store knowledge, as needed in pattern recognition tasks.