Most previous work about the hardware design of a fuzzy logic controller (F
LC) intended to either improve its inference performance for real-time appl
ications or to reduce its hardware cost. To our knowledge, there has been n
o attempt to design a hardware FLC that can perform an adaptive fuzzy infer
ence for the applications of on-line adaptation. The purpose of this paper
is to present such an adaptive memory-efficient FLC and its applications. T
aking advantage of the adaptability provided by a symbolic fuzzy rule forma
t and the dynamic membership function generator, as well as the high-speed
integration capability afforded by VLSI, the proposed adaptive fuzzy logic
controller (AFLC) can perform an adaptive fuzzy inference process using var
ious inference parameters, such as the shape and location of a membership f
unction, dynamically and quickly, Three examples are used to illustrate its
applications, and the experimental results show the excellent adaptability
provided by AFLC.