Reinforced Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Clustering-Based Neural Network Realized Through Attention-Based Clustering Mechanism and Successive Learning

In this article, a novel attention-based reinforced interval type-2 fuzzy clustering neural network (ARIT2FCN) is developed to improve the generalization performance of fuzzy clustering-based neural networks (FCNNs). Commonly, fuzzy rules in FCNNs are generated through the clustering-based rule generator. However, the generated fuzzy rules may not be able to fully describe the given data, because the clustering-based rule generator does not simultaneously consider the intracluster homogeneity and intercluster heterogeneity for both of data characteristics and label information when defining membership functions (MFs) of fuzzy rules. This negatively affects fuzzy rules to accurately quantify the interclass heterogeneity and intraclass homogeneity and degrades the performance of FCNNs. The ARIT2FCN is proposed with the aid of the attention-based clustering mechanism and the successive learning method. The attention-based clustering mechanism is designed to define MFs by simultaneously considering data characteristics and label information. The successive learning method is adopted to construct the desired fuzzy rules that can capture the interclass heterogeneity and intraclass homogeneity. Moreover, L-2 norm regularization is used to alleviate the overfitting effect. The performance of ARIT2FCN is evaluated on machine learning datasets with 16 comparative methods. In addition, two real-world problems are adopted to validate the effectiveness of ARIT2FCN. Experimental results demonstrate that the ARIT2FCN outperforms the comparative methods, and the statistical tests also support the superiority of ARIT2FCN.