Publisher's Synopsis
In the modern science and technology there are some research directions and ch- lenges which are at the forefront of world wide research activities because of their relevance. This relevance may be related to different aspects. First, from a point of view of researchers it can be implied by just an analytic or algorithmic difficulty in the solution of problems within an area. From a broader perspective, this re- vance can be related to how important problems and challenges in a particular area are to society, corporate or national competitiveness, etc. Needless to say that the latter, more global challenges are probably more decisive a driving force for s- ence seen from a global perspective. One of such "meta-challenges" in the present world is that of intelligent s- tems. For a long time it has been obvious that the complexity of our world and the speed of changes we face in virtually all processes that have impact on our life imply a need to automate many tasks and processes that have been so far limited to human beings because they require some sort of intelligence.
