Introduction

This hypertextual document and the applications it contains aim at giving the user the chance to evaluate simply and intuitively the potentialities deriving from the use of Soft Computing techniques.
In particular, the CD shows some of the fields of application of Soft Computing with reference to Genetic Algorithms, Cellular Neural Networks (CNN), and Fuzzy Logic.
Fuzzy Logic allows us to use a knowledge base in a linguistic fashion for problem solving. By way of example, we give an identification system which shows how an object can be classified on the basis of the values of its properties expressed numerically and according to linguistic rules.
The use of a CNN allows a complex system to be modeled with a few simple equations. The examples show simulations of complex phenomena such as the propagation of a heat wave, the formation of a vortex, or the evolution of a population. Phenomena like these are hard to reproduce by mathematical description of the system on account of the number of factors at stake and the complexity of the calculations, but they can be readily simulated by CNN.
In the absence of a knowledge base the use of genetic algorithms allows the "rules" describing a system to be identified. As an example, we give the solution of a problem regarding the definition of a fuzzy system by genetic algorithms in the absence of a knowledge base.
In addition, a demonstration is given of how Soft Computing techniques prove to be fundamental in some applications concerning the movement of robots based on biological models, both with regard to the mechanics and to the control system.
We trust that these simple, but not for that reason banal, examples will give some idea of the potentialities still to be discovered in Soft Computing.

Francesco Zivillica