"One feature that sets certain rice cookers above the rest is “fuzzy logic,” or the ability of an onboard computer to detect how quickly the rice is cooking or to what level doneness it has reached, then make real time adjustments to time and temperature accordingly. " ... From: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/zojirushi-rice-cooker
It is a term that is still quite a fair bit for marketing. I think in this case (zojirushi) it isn't trinary, rather some probalistic/baysian system to derive a boolean from a number of factors (time, temp, and so on).
Back in the late 80s and early 90s fuzzy logic became something of a fad in Japan because several of the leading researchers were at Japanese institutions. So it became a term of hype with a bit of flag waving involved.
I'm reasonably convinced my Zojirushi has nothing more than a way to sense when the evaporation shifts and to start the "steaming" countdown timer then, probably using the resistance of the heating coil. In other words it's just a replacement for the weight/balance mechanism in a traditional "dumb" rice cooker, not something doing more complex modeling as far as I can tell.
It is however built like a tank and "just works" so I'm entirely happy with my purchase.
It is a term that is still quite a fair bit for marketing. I think in this case (zojirushi) it isn't trinary, rather some probalistic/baysian system to derive a boolean from a number of factors (time, temp, and so on).