Fuzzy Transfer Learning: Methodology and application

Producing a methodology that is able to predict output using a model is a well studied area in Computational Intelligence (CI). However, a number of real-world applications require a model but have little or no data available of the specific environment. Predominantly, standard machine learning approaches focus on a need for training data for such models to come from the same domain as the target task. Such restrictions can severely reduce the data acquisition making it extremely costly, or in certain situations, impossible. This impedes the ability of these approaches to model such environments. It is on this particular problem that this paper is focussed.

In this paper two concepts, Transfer Learning (TL) and Fuzzy Logic (FL) are combined in a framework, Fuzzy Transfer Learning (FuzzyTL), to address the problem of learning tasks that have no prior direct contextual knowledge. Through the use of a FL based learning method, uncertainty that is evident in dynamic environments is represented. By applying a TL approach through the combining of labelled data from a contextually related source task, and little or no unlabelled data from a target task, the framework is shown to be able to accomplish predictive tasks using models learned from contextually different data.