Computing the shortest path with words

TLDR: This paper proposed a generalised Diskrtra's algorithm for finding shortest paths from a source node to every other node in a fuzzy graph where the arc lengths are represented by some natural words taken from natural language.

Abstract: Computing with words is a soft computing technique to solve the decision-making problem with the information described in natural language. In this paper, we proposed a generalised Diskrtra's algorithm for finding shortest paths from a source node to every other node in a fuzzy graph where the arc lengths are represented by some natural words taken from natural language. Human being generally describes the arc lengths of any shortest path problem in real life by the terms small, large, some, etc. term which do not supply any natural numbers or fuzzy numbers. We describe those terms as words. Here, we use interval type 2 fuzzy set (IT2FS) to capture the uncertainty of the words. A perceptual computer model is introduced to determine the rank of the shortest path which is a collection of words. A numerical example of transportation network is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.