Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342

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Decoupled fuzzy controller design with single-input fuzzy logic
Shi-Yuan Chen, Fang-Ming Yu, Hung-Yuan Chung

Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Chungli, Taiwan 320, ROC
Received 27 April 2000; received in revised form 11 June 2001; accepted 19 June 2001
Abstract
A decoupled fuzzy controller design with single-input fuzzy logic is proposed. We will utilize the approach of the
single-input fuzzy logic to explore the fourth-order nonlinear systems. In addition, ve fuzzy rules are given to control a
class of fourth-order nonlinear systems. Using this approach, the system can achieve asymptotic stability and the response
of system will converge faster than that of previous reports. Two simulation studies of a cartpole system and a ballbeam
system are presented to demonstrate the eectiveness of the method. c 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Fuzzy control; Sliding mode control; Signed distance
1. Introduction
Fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs) have been proven
to be a powerful tool since the work of Mamdani
[12] was proposed in 1974. The fuzzy control algo-
rithmcan be regarded as model-free control algorithms
in contrast to a conventional feedback control algo-
rithm. However, some issues still exist in the control of
complex systems using fuzzy logic controllers, for
example, (1) No general stability analysis tools can
be applied to FLCs. (2) The large amount of fuzzy
rules for a high-order system make the analysis com-
plex. (3) The design parameters of membership func-
tions aect the performance of the fuzzy system and
suitable membership functions may be obtained via a

Corresponding author. Tel.: +886-3-4227151-4475; fax:

+886-3-4255830.
E-mail address: hychung@ee.ncu.edu.tw (H.-Y. Chung).
considerable time-consuming and a trial-and-error
procedure. Hence, many researchers spend much
eort to investigate the above three problems to over-
come these formidable tasks.
In recent years, the concept of the fuzzy sliding
mode control (FSMC) [6,8,5] has been reported. To
decrease the number of rules in the rule base, sev-
eral authors have suggested using a composite state,
called a sliding surface to obtain a fuzzy sliding mode
controller described in the previous works. The advan-
tage of such controllers is that the number of rules re-
quired is reduced from m
n
to m
2
in Hwang [6], [7] and
Bartolini [1] or nm
2
in Kung [9]. So, the FSMC is one
of the reducing fuzzy rules methods. In general, since
the FSMC combines fuzzy control and sliding mode
control principles, the closed-loop system has better
performance than that using only one control theory.
Moreover, another problem of designing fuzzy
controllers is applying them to higher order systems.
0165-0114/02/$ - see front matter c 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0165- 0114( 01) 00130- 0
336 S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342
Table 1
Rule table for a signed distance fuzzy logic control
d
s
NB NM ZE PM PB
u PB PM ZE NM NB
The large majority of fuzzy controllers are limited to
systems with predominantly second-order dynamics.
As proven in [2,10,4], conventional fuzzy controllers
which use the system error and its derivative in the
fuzzy rule base are a type of PID control. The ac-
tion of such fuzzy controllers are equivalent to that
of full-state feedback controllers for second-order
systems and, hence, these systems can always be
stabilized. However, for a fourth-order system, such
as the ball-and-beam system, the system may not be
stabilized by using a PID controller and, therefore,
using a conventional fuzzy controller will result in a
large number of rules (m
4
). For these systems, the
intuitive sense is that some rules may not be activated
if a stabilizing rule base is determined.
In most studies, the fuzzy controller of second-order
systems is designed on a phase plane built by error e
and change of error e that are produced from the states
x and x. For example, in a cartpole system only the
pole subsystem is considered ignoring the cart subsys-
tem and it is thus impossible to achieve a good con-
trol around the set point (distance =0). In this study,
a decoupled fuzzy controller design with single-input
fuzzy logic is proposed. This controller guarantees
some properties, such as the robust performance and
stability properties. In addition, a class of fourth-order
nonlinear systems is investigated. Lo and Kuo [11]
proposed a method called decoupled fuzzy sliding-
mode control to cope with the above issue. Another
kind of fuzzy approach [3] is used to replace the fuzzy
controller of [11]. It is the signed distance that pro-
poses a sole fuzzy input variable of order mas given in
Table 1 and Fig. 3, rather than the controllers which
are of order m
2
on the phase plane constituted by e
and e or higher order for single-input systems, where
m is the number of fuzzication levels. Furthermore,
the Lyapunov function is employed to get the signed
distance, and then get the control input u, as well as
by means of the method of decoupled fuzzy sliding
mode controller to get better performance. Compared
with [11,3], ve fuzzy control rules are used as shown
in Table 1. If one needs a ner control, one can easily
add or modify the rules by means of the Table 1 and
Fig. 3. Using this approach, the system can achieve
asymptotic stability and it will converge faster than
that of [11].
The rest of the paper is divided into ve sections.
In Section 2, the systems are described. In Section 3,
the signed distance fuzzy logic control is presented.
In Section 4, the detail design of the decoupled fuzzy
logic controller is proposed. In Section 5, the pro-
posed controller is used to control a cart-pole system
and a ball-beam system. Finally, we conclude with
Section 6.
2. System description
Consider a second-order nonlinear system, which
can be represented by the following statespace model
in a canonical form
x
1
(t) = x
2
(t);
x
2
(t) = f(x) +b(x)u +d(t);
y(t) = x
1
(t);
(1)
where x =[x
1
; x
2
]
T
is the state vector, f(x) and b(x)
are nonlinear functions, u is the control input, and d(t)
is external disturbance. The disturbance is assumed to
be bounded as |d(t)|6D(t).
For this kind of the second-order system, we can use
many kinds of control methods, such as, fuzzy control,
PID control, sliding mode control, etc. A control law u
can be easily designed to make the second-order sys-
tem (1) arrive at our control goal. However, for such
nonlinear models as a cartpole system, the system
dynamic representation is generally not in a canonical
form exactly. Rather, it has a form shown below:
x
1
(t) = x
2
(t);
x
2
(t) = f
1
(x) +b
1
(x)u
1
+d
1
(t);
x
3
(t) = x
4
(t);
x
4
(t) = f
2
(x) +b
2
(x)u
2
+d
2
(t);
(2)
where x =[x
1
; x
2
; x
3
; x
4
]
T
is the state vector, f
1
(x),
f
2
(x) and b
1
(x), b
2
(x) are nonlinear functions, u
1
,
u
2
are the control inputs, and d
1
(t), d
2
(t) are exter-
nal disturbances. The disturbances are assumed to
be bounded as |d
1
(t)|6D
1
(t), |d
2
(t)|6D
2
(t). From
(2), one can design u
1
and u
2
, respectively, however,
S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342 337
Fig. 1. Derivation of a signed distance.
this approach is only utilized to control a subsystem
in (2). For example, if the model is a cartpole sys-
tem, we only control either the pole or the cart of a
system such as (2). Hence, the idea of decoupling is
employed to design a control u to govern the whole
system.
3. Signed distance fuzzy logic control
In this section, the idea of [3] named the signed
distance is used, and the feasibility of the present ap-
proach will be demonstrated. The switching line is de-
ned by
s: x +c
1
x =0: (3)
First, we introduce a new variable called the signed
distance. Let A(x; x) be the intersection point of the
switching line and the line perpendicular to the switch-
ing line froman operating point B(x
1
; x
1
), as illustrated
in Fig. 1. Next, d
1
is evaluated. The distance between
A(x; x) and B(x
1
; x
1
) can be given by the following
expression:
d
1
= [(x x
1
)
2
+ ( x x
1
)
2
]
1=2
=
| x
1
+c
1
x
1
|

1 +c
2
1
: (4)
Without loss of generality, Eq. (4) can be rewritten
as follows:
d =
| x +c
1
x|

1 +c
2
1
: (5)
The signed distance d
s
is dened for an arbitrary point
B(x; x) as follows:
d
s
= sgn(s)
| x +c
1
x|

1 +c
2
1
=
x +c
1
x

1 +c
2
1
=
s

1 +c
2
1
; (6)
where
sgn(s) =

1 for s 0;
1 for s 0:
(7)
For the second-order system (1), a switching line is
chosen as
s = c
1
x
1
+x
2
: (8)
By taking the time derivative of both sides of (8), we
can obtain
s =c
1
x
1
+ x
2
=c
1
x
2
+f(x) +b(x)u +d: (9)
Then, multiplying both sides of the above equation by
s gives
s s = sc
1
x
2
+sf(x) +sb(x)u +sd: (10)
Here, we assume that b(x)0. In (9), it is seen that
s increases as u increases and vice versa. Eq. (10)
provides the information that if s0, the decreasing u
will make s s decrease and that if s0, the increasing
u will make s s decrease. Now, we choose a Lyapunov
function
V =
1
2
d
2
s
: (11)
Then

V = d
s

d
s
=
s s
1 +c
2
1
: (12)
Hence, it is seen that if s0, then d
s
0, decreasing
u will make s s decrease so that

V0 and that if s0,
338 S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342
then d
s
0, increasing u will make s s decrease so that

V0. So we can ensure that the system is asymptoti-

cally stable. From the above relation, we can conclude
that
u d
s
: (13)
Hence, the fuzzy rule table can be established on a one-
dimensional space of d
s
as shown in Table 1 instead of
a two-dimensional space of x and x. The control action
can be determined by d
s
only. Hence, we can easily add
or modify rules for ne control. For implementation, a
triangular type membership function is chosen for the
aforementioned fuzzy variables, as shown in Fig. 2.
Remark 1. The rule table can be established on a one-
dimensional space like Table 1. It is seen that the to-
tal number of rules is greatly reduced compared with
conventional FLCs. In other words, a traditional fuzzy
system has four states to be controlled and the range
of each state variable is divided into ve fuzzy sets.
The number of rules forming the knowledge database
is 5
4
=625. With the present method, only one vari-
able (d
s
) needs to be fuzzied and only ve rules are
necessary to establish the knowledge database.
The signed distance fuzzy logic control (SDFLC) is
shown in Fig. 3 where d
s
and u are the input and output
of the signed distance fuzzy logic control, respectively.
The input of the proposed fuzzy controller is

d
s
, which
is a fuzzied variable of d
s
. The output of the fuzzy
controller is U, which is the fuzzied variable of u.
All the universes of discourse of

d
s
and U are arranged
from 1 to 1. Thus, the range of nonfuzzy variables
d
s
and u must be scaled to t the universe of discourse
of fuzzied variable

d
s
and U with scaling factors K
1
and K
2
, respectively, namely,

d
s
= K
1
d
s
(t); (14)
u(t) = K
2
U: (15)
4. Design of decoupled fuzzy logic controller
In this section, the idea of the signed distance of
fuzzy logic control is used in Section 3. In Eq. (2),
we rst dene one switching line as
s
1
= c
1
(x
1
z) +x
2
(16)
and another switching line as
s
2
= c
2
x
3
+x
4
: (17)
The control objective is to drive the system state to
the original equilibrium point. The switching line vari-
ables s
1
and s
2
are reduced to zeros gradually at the
same time by an intermediate variable z.
In Eq. (16), z is a value transferred from s
2
, it has
a value proportional to s
2
and has the range proper to
x
1
. Eq. (16) denotes that the control objective of u
1
is
changed from x
1
=0, x
2
=0 to x
1
=z, x
2
=0.
Because the controller u =u
1
is used to govern the
whole system, the bound of x
1
can be guaranteed by
letting
|z| 6Z
u
; 0 Z
u
1; (18)
where Z
u
is the upper bound of abs(z). Eq. (18) im-
plies that the maximum absolute value of x
1
will be
limited.
Summarizing what we have mentioned above, z can
be dened as
z = sat(s
2
=
z
)Z
u
; 0 Z
u
1; (19)
where
z
is the boundary layer of s
2
to smooth z,
z
transfers s
2
to the proper range of x
1
, and the denition
of sat() function is
sat() =

sgn() if || 1;
if || 1:
(20)
Notice that z is a decaying oscillation signal because
Z
u
is a factor less than one.
Remark 2. Consider Eq. (16). If s
1
=0, then x
1
=z,
x
2
=0. Since z is a value transferred from s
2
, when
s
2
0, then z 0 and x
1
0. From Eq. (17), if
the condition s
1
0, the control objective can be
achieved.
Remark 3. Although SDFLC may be extended to the
order of 2
n
(n =1; 2; 3; : : :) system, it cannot be applied
in higher-order system as in [11]. In a similar way, It
can carry over to the third-order system.
The two-level decoupled SDFLC is proposed and
is shown in Fig. 4.
S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342 339
Fig. 2. Fuzzy variable of triangular type.
Fig. 3. The block diagram of the SDFLC.
Fig. 4. The block of the decoupled SDFLC.
5. Computer simulations
In this section, we shall demonstrate that the decou-
pled SDFLC is applicable to both the cartpole system
and the ballbeam system [11] to verify the theoreti-
cal development.
5.1. Inverted pendulum
The structure of an inverted pendulum is illustrated
in Fig. 5 and its dynamic is described below:
x
1
=x
2
;
x
2
=
m
t
g sin x
1
m
p
Lsin x
1
cos x
1
x
2
2
+cos x
1
u
L(
4
3
m
t
m
p
cos
2
x
1
)
+d;
x
3
=x
4
;
x
4
=
4
3
m
p
Lx
2
2
sin x
1
+m
p
g sin x
1
cos x
1
4
3
m
t
m
p
cos
2
x
1
+
4
3(
4
3
m
t
m
p
cos
2
x
1
)
u +d; (21)
where x
1
= is the angle of the pole with respect to the
vertical axis; x
2
=

the angle velocity of the pole with
340 S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342
Fig. 5. Structure of an inverted pendulum.
respect to the vertical axis; x
3
=x the position of the
cart; x
4
= x the velocity of the cart; and m
t
=m
c
+m
p
.
In what follows, we dene the following variables:
s
1
= c
1
( z) +

= c
1
(x
1
z) +x
2
; (22)
s
2
= c
2
x + x = c
2
x
3
+x
4
(23)
and
z = sat(s
2
=
z
)Z
u
; 0 Z
u
1: (24)
In the simulation, the following specications are
used:
m
p
= 0:05 kg; m
c
= 1 kg; L = 0:5 m;
g = 9:8 m=s
2
; c
1
= 5; c
2
= 0:5;

z
= 15; Z
u
= 0:9425; |d| 60:0873;
K
1
= 1; K
2
= 40
and initial values are
= 60

;

= 0; x = 0; x = 0:
Figs. 68 shows the simulation result. It is found that
the pole and the cart can be stabilized to the equilib-
rium point.
Fig. 6. Angle evolution of the pole. (), z (- - - -).
Fig. 7. Position evolution of the cart.
5.2. Ballbeam system
Consider a ballbeam system as depicted in Fig. 9.
The mathematical expression of this system can be
written as
x
1
= x
2
; x
2
= u +d; x
3
= x
4
;
x
4
= B(x
3
x
2
2
g sin x
1
);
(25)
where x
1
= is the angle of the beam with respect to
the vertical axis; x
2
=

the angle velocity of the beam
with respect to the vertical axis; x
3
=r the position
of the ball; x
4
= r the velocity of the ball; B=MR
2
=
S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342 341
Fig. 8. Control output of Example 1.
Fig. 9. Structure of a ballbeam system.
(J
b
+ MR
2
); J
b
the moment of inertia of the ball; M
the mass of the ball; R the radius of the ball; g the
acceleration of gravity.
The objective is to keep the ball close to the center of
the beamand the beamclose to the horizontal position.
Dene
s
1
= c
1
(x
1
z) +x
2
; (26)
s
2
= c
2
x
3
+x
4
(27)
and
z = sat(s
2
=
z
)Z
u
; 0 Z
u
1: (28)
In the simulation, the following parameters are used:
B = 0:7143; J
b
= 2 10
6
; M = 0:05 kg;
R = 0:01 m; g = 9:8 m=s
2
Fig. 10. Angle evolution of the beam. (), z(- - - -).
Fig. 11. Position evolution of the ball.
c
1
= 5; c
2
= 0:5;
z
= 5; Z
u
= 0:9425;
|d| 60:08; K
1
= 1; K
2
= 40;
the initial values are
x
1
= = 60

; x
2
=

= 0;
x
3
= r = 0; x
4
= r = 0:
The simulation results are shown in Figs. 1012. It
is found that and r converge to zero, respectively.
From Figs. 6 and 7 to 10 and 11, with the same c
1
=5,
342 S.-Y. Chen et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 129 (2002) 335342
Fig. 12. Control output of Example 2.
c
2
=0:5 as in [5], it is seen that the convergence is
faster than that of [11].
6. Conclusions
The present approach was used to replace the fuzzy
controller of Los approach. Compared with previous
results, only ve fuzzy control rules are needed as
given in Table 1. For a ner control, we can easily add
or modify rules by way of the rule table for a signed
distance fuzzy logic control and the SDFLC. Next,
simulation results show that the pole and the cart can
be stabilized to the equilibrium, and r of the ball
beam system converge to zero, and the performance
is better than that of [11]. Although the SDFLC can
be extended to an nth-order system, however, the de-
coupled method only satises the fourth-order system
like the cartpole system. Hence, the same weak point
of the approach is that when applied to systems higher
than fourth order such as a double-inverted pendulum
system (which needs a three-level control), if the cart
is to be stabilized at the origin as in [11], then the
method described here will fail. If there exists a new
SMC method, which can deal with a higher-order sys-
tem larger than the fourth- and the higher-order system
being not a canonical form, then the SDFLC may be
combined with each other. This may be an important
and interesting topic in future.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the nancial support
of the National Science Council of the Republic of
Taiwan under Contract NSC89-2213-E008-079.
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