Fuzzy has become a key-word for marketing. Electronic articles
without Fuzzy-component gradually turn out to be dead stock. As a gag,
that shows the popularity of Fuzzy Logic, there even exists a toiletpaper
with "Fuzzy Logic" printed on it.
In Japan Fuzzy-research is widely supported with a huge budget. In
Europe and the USA efforts are being made to catch up with the tremendous
japanese success. For instance, the NASA space agency is engaged in
applying Fuzzy Logic for complex docking-maneuvers.
Fuzzy Logic is basically a multivalued logic that allows intermediate
values to be defined between conventional evaluations like
yes/no, true/false, black/white, etc. Notions like
rather warm or pretty cold can be formulated mathematically
and processed by computers. In this way an attempt is made to apply a
more human-like way of thinking in the programming of computers.
Fuzzy Logic was initiated in 1965 by Lotfi A. Zadeh, professor
for computer science at the University of California in Berkeley.