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I remember when Fuzzy Logic was an everyday tech term that seemed to be the big new hotness. I think people were excited about how they used it in the mass com

I remember when Fuzzy Logic was an everyday tech term that seemed to be the big new hotness. I think people were excited about how they used it in the mass combat simulator software for LoTR. Now it seems to be mostly associated with rice cookers. They must do an amazing job, since it still seems to be people's favorite rice cooking tech!

morder 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI Great Technology Connections video about how it works.
- gifvenut 3y ago
  Your video explains how traditional rice cookers work. However it doesn’t explain how fuzzy logic in a rice cooker works.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
I thought that was all marketing nonsense and they actually work by detecting when the temperature spikes because the water has been consumed. If I head to head my zojirushi vs a bargain rice cooker with temperature detector, would I be able to tell the difference?
- MisterTea 3y ago
  The cheap cookers use a mechanical setup as there are no electronics. I have the cheapest Zojirushi 3-cup cooker where you just push down a lever. That lever mechanically latches a spring loaded mechanism that closes the heating element switch. The temperature will stay relatively stable as the water absorbs the heat keeping it at around 100 C. Once the water is evaporated from the bottom the temperature rises which trips a bimetallic mechanism releasing the spring loaded lever opening the heater switch. Stupid simple.
  - kjellsbells 3y ago
    Tangential, but one reason zojirushi is a buy it for life product is because you can get spare parts for a very long time. I have a 20 year old zj with no fundamental failures beyond the cookpot getting old and dented, and zj part replacements are easy and cheap.
    - yborg 3y ago
      Try replacing the clock battery on a unit that has one :/
      - gomox 3y ago
        Disappointing aspect indeed, but the battery is only relevant to people that use the clock to set cooking times a lot AND ALSO keep their rice cooker unplugged. The intersection of those 2 groups is likely minimal, and the slight inconvenience of setting the time for the aforementioned group is not that bad.
  - nosrepa 3y ago
    Or is it [reaching the curie point of a magnet to switch the heat off](https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI)?
    - MisterTea 3y ago
      Good point. I haven't looked at mine but perhaps it is.
- invalidator 3y ago
  Mine consistently produces better rice than my old mechanical one. It's also slower. I think it does a more gentle temperature ramp than the mechanical one did.
- gomox 3y ago
  I replaced a crummy spring/latch one with a Zoji induction 3 cup and I would never go back to the old one. Rice is always evenly cooked and never stuck/toasted at the bottom, keep warm with tracking of elapsed time, countdown to being done, plus flexibility for lots of different type of rice and grains. Could you do the job with a cheap one? Sure, but you can always make rice on the stovetop as well if savings/space are a big priority. This is a convenience appliance, and the convenience of the fancy ones is a significant improvement over the basic ones.
  - orbisvicis 3y ago
    When I cook rice I purposefully take the lid off and add 10 extra minutes to get that delicious crispy bottom.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
      Tahdig! You can better control it if you wrap the lid in a towel and boil the rice on a low fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice#Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice#Iran
  - halfnormalform 3y ago
    The Zojirushi 3 cup induction is the highest scoring rice cooker tested by Consumers Union. It was expensive but it makes excellent rice and you don’t have to be precise with the water. I hope to have it for the rest of my life.
gravescale 3y ago
I've always assumed it was a name for a clever way to improve on limitations of simple bang-bang control with on-off sensors and actuators plus some 7400 series-type logic. Nowadays you can have an STM8 with two dozen 10 or 12-bit ADCs and enough grunt to do hundreds of PID loops at once for 10 cents.
jerf 3y ago
My understanding is that there was a period of time where computer science was very excited about fuzzy logic, because it was thought it would prove to be more powerful than conventional logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic However, it was demonstrated that it had no additional power over conventional logic, so interest faded as quickly as it rose. Which is not to say it is useless, but that rather than a revolution it became just another tool in the belt. It can be more convenient to formulate certain systems in fuzzy logic rather than binary logic, but it doesn't really create new possibilities. And programmers in the trenches were doing this sort of thing already anyhow, less formally, but generally effectively. It was weird how loud it was for sure. New forms of logic don't generally get the red carpet treatment like that. I don't know why a rice cooker would particularly care about "fuzzy logic" other than a bizarre marketing spandrel [1]. [1]: Since this seems an obscure usage of an already-obscure term: https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-spandrels.html https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-spandrels....
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Control theory is very interesting and in my opinion more relevant than before
- avidiax 3y ago
  Fuzzy logic sounds like it has been superseded by neural networks. It has much the same principle, i.e. gates/neurons that are tuned to provide a non-digital output. But with fuzzy logic, presumably the parameters and network are hand tuned.
  - sunshowers 3y ago
    I don't think "superseded" is the right word, in the same way that ordinary relativity [1] hasn't been superseded by special or general relativity. Fuzzy logic is a more straightforward model that works well enough here, so why throw in the additional complexity and illegibility of neural nets? [1] Also known as "classical mechanics". Despite widespread belief that relativity is a 20th century idea, the first person to describe relativity wasn't Einstein -- it was Galileo. Einstein himself saw his work on relativity as extending what Galileo had done.

morder 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI Great Technology Connections video about how it works.

gifvenut 3y ago
Your video explains how traditional rice cookers work. However it doesn’t explain how fuzzy logic in a rice cooker works.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

I thought that was all marketing nonsense and they actually work by detecting when the temperature spikes because the water has been consumed. If I head to head my zojirushi vs a bargain rice cooker with temperature detector, would I be able to tell the difference?

MisterTea 3y ago
The cheap cookers use a mechanical setup as there are no electronics. I have the cheapest Zojirushi 3-cup cooker where you just push down a lever. That lever mechanically latches a spring loaded mechanism that closes the heating element switch. The temperature will stay relatively stable as the water absorbs the heat keeping it at around 100 C. Once the water is evaporated from the bottom the temperature rises which trips a bimetallic mechanism releasing the spring loaded lever opening the heater switch. Stupid simple.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  Tangential, but one reason zojirushi is a buy it for life product is because you can get spare parts for a very long time. I have a 20 year old zj with no fundamental failures beyond the cookpot getting old and dented, and zj part replacements are easy and cheap.
  - yborg 3y ago
    Try replacing the clock battery on a unit that has one :/
    - gomox 3y ago
      Disappointing aspect indeed, but the battery is only relevant to people that use the clock to set cooking times a lot AND ALSO keep their rice cooker unplugged. The intersection of those 2 groups is likely minimal, and the slight inconvenience of setting the time for the aforementioned group is not that bad.
- nosrepa 3y ago
  Or is it [reaching the curie point of a magnet to switch the heat off](https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI)?
  - MisterTea 3y ago
    Good point. I haven't looked at mine but perhaps it is.
invalidator 3y ago
Mine consistently produces better rice than my old mechanical one. It's also slower. I think it does a more gentle temperature ramp than the mechanical one did.
gomox 3y ago
I replaced a crummy spring/latch one with a Zoji induction 3 cup and I would never go back to the old one. Rice is always evenly cooked and never stuck/toasted at the bottom, keep warm with tracking of elapsed time, countdown to being done, plus flexibility for lots of different type of rice and grains. Could you do the job with a cheap one? Sure, but you can always make rice on the stovetop as well if savings/space are a big priority. This is a convenience appliance, and the convenience of the fancy ones is a significant improvement over the basic ones.
- orbisvicis 3y ago
  When I cook rice I purposefully take the lid off and add 10 extra minutes to get that delicious crispy bottom.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    Tahdig! You can better control it if you wrap the lid in a towel and boil the rice on a low fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice#Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_rice#Iran
- halfnormalform 3y ago
  The Zojirushi 3 cup induction is the highest scoring rice cooker tested by Consumers Union. It was expensive but it makes excellent rice and you don’t have to be precise with the water. I hope to have it for the rest of my life.

gravescale 3y ago

I've always assumed it was a name for a clever way to improve on limitations of simple bang-bang control with on-off sensors and actuators plus some 7400 series-type logic. Nowadays you can have an STM8 with two dozen 10 or 12-bit ADCs and enough grunt to do hundreds of PID loops at once for 10 cents.

jerf 3y ago

My understanding is that there was a period of time where computer science was very excited about fuzzy logic, because it was thought it would prove to be more powerful than conventional logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic However, it was demonstrated that it had no additional power over conventional logic, so interest faded as quickly as it rose. Which is not to say it is useless, but that rather than a revolution it became just another tool in the belt. It can be more convenient to formulate certain systems in fuzzy logic rather than binary logic, but it doesn't really create new possibilities. And programmers in the trenches were doing this sort of thing already anyhow, less formally, but generally effectively. It was weird how loud it was for sure. New forms of logic don't generally get the red carpet treatment like that. I don't know why a rice cooker would particularly care about "fuzzy logic" other than a bizarre marketing spandrel [1]. [1]: Since this seems an obscure usage of an already-obscure term: https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-spandrels.html https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-are-spandrels....

jbverschoor 3y ago
Control theory is very interesting and in my opinion more relevant than before
avidiax 3y ago
Fuzzy logic sounds like it has been superseded by neural networks. It has much the same principle, i.e. gates/neurons that are tuned to provide a non-digital output. But with fuzzy logic, presumably the parameters and network are hand tuned.
- sunshowers 3y ago
  I don't think "superseded" is the right word, in the same way that ordinary relativity [1] hasn't been superseded by special or general relativity. Fuzzy logic is a more straightforward model that works well enough here, so why throw in the additional complexity and illegibility of neural nets? [1] Also known as "classical mechanics". Despite widespread belief that relativity is a 20th century idea, the first person to describe relativity wasn't Einstein -- it was Galileo. Einstein himself saw his work on relativity as extending what Galileo had done.