The “fuzzy dot” (or fuzzy relation) representation of fuzzy rules in fuzzy rule based systems, in case of classical fuzzy reasoning methods (e.g. the Zadeh-Mamdani- Larsen Compositional Rule of Inference (CRI) (Zadeh, 1973) (Mamdani, 1975) (Larsen, 1980) or the Takagi - Sugeno fuzzy inference (Sugeno, 1985) (Takagi & Sugeno, 1985)), are assuming the completeness of the fuzzy rule base. If there are some rules missing i.e. the rule base is “sparse”, observations may exist which hit no rule in the rule base and therefore no conclusion can be obtained. One way of handling the “fuzzy dot” knowledge representation in case of sparse fuzzy rule bases is the application of the Fuzzy Rule Interpolation (FRI) methods, where the derivable rules are deliberately missing. Since FRI methods can provide reasonable (interpolated) conclusions even if none of the existing rules fires under the current observation. From the beginning of 1990s numerous FRI methods have been proposed. The main goal of this article is to give a brief but comprehensive introduction to the existing FRI methods.
