Fuzzy-neuro LVQ and its comparison with fuzzy algorithm LVQ in artificial odor discrimination system

The human sensory test is often used for obtaining the sensory quantities of odors, however, the fluctuation of results due to the expert's condition can cause discrepancies among panelists. Authors have studied the artificial odor discrimination system using a quartz resonator sensor and a back-propagation neural network as the recognition system, however, the unknown category of odor is always recognized as the known category of odor. In this paper, a kind of fuzzy algorithm for learning vector quantization (LVQ) is developed and used as a pattern classifier. In this type of fuzzy LVQ, the neuron activation is derived through fuzziness of the input data, so that the neural system could deal with the statistics of the measurement error directly. During learning, the similarity between the training vector and the reference vectors are calculated, and the winning reference vector is updated by shifting the central position of the fuzzy reference vector toward or away from the input vector, and by modifying its fuzziness. Two types of fuzziness modifications are used, i.e., a constant modification factor and a variable modification factor. This type of fuzzy-neuro (FN) LVQ is different in nature from fuzzy algorithm (FA) LVQ, and in this paper, the performance of FNLVQ network is compared with that of FALVQ in an artificial odor recognition system. Experimental results show that both FALVQ and FNLVQ could provide high recognition probability in determining various known categories of odors, however, the FNLVQ neural system has the ability to recognize the unknown category of odor that could not be recognized by the FALVQ neural system.