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The International Symposia on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) started at Riken, Japan in 1992. Since then, the DARS symposia have been held every two years: in 1994 and 1996 in Japan (Riken, Wako), in 1998 in Germany (Karlsruhe), in 2000 in the USA (Knoxville, TN), in 2002 in Japan (Fukuoka), in 2004 in France (Toulouse), and in 2006 in the USA (Minneapolis, MN). The 9th DARS symposium, which was held during November 17–19 in T- kuba, Japan, hosted 84 participants from 13 countries. The 48 papers presented there were selected through rigorous peer review with a 50% acceptance ratio. Along with three invited talks, they addressed the spreading research fields of DARS, which are classifiable along two streams: theoretical and standard studies of DARS, and interdisciplinary studies using DARS concepts. The former stream includes multi-robot cooperation (task assignment methodology among multiple robots, multi-robot localization, etc.), swarm intelligence, and modular robots. The latter includes distributed sensing, mobiligence, ambient intelligence, and mul- agent systems interaction with human beings. This book not only offers readers the latest research results related to DARS from theoretical studies to application-oriented ones; it also describes the present trends of this field. With the diversity and depth revealed herein, we expect that DARS technologies will flourish soon.

The European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) and the European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD) were jointly organized this year for the?fth time in a row, after some years of mutual independence before. After Freiburg (2001), Helsinki (2002), Cavtat (2003) and Pisa (2004), Porto received the 16th edition of ECML and the 9th PKDD in October 3–7. Having the two conferences together seems to be working well: 585 di?erent paper submissions were received for both events, which maintains the high s- mission standard of last year. Of these, 335 were submitted to ECML only, 220 to PKDD only and 30 to both. Such a high volume of scienti?c work required a tremendous e?ort from Area Chairs, Program Committee members and some additional reviewers. On average, PC members had 10 papers to evaluate, and Area Chairs had 25 papers to decide upon. We managed to have 3 highly qua-?edindependentreviewsperpaper(withveryfewexceptions)andoneadditional overall input from one of the Area Chairs. After the authors'responses and the online discussions for many of the papers, we arrived at the?nal selection of 40 regular papers for ECML and 35 for PKDD. Besides these, 32 others were accepted as short papers for ECML and 35 for PKDD. This represents a joint acceptance rate of around 13% for regular papers and 25% overall. We thank all involved for all the e?ort with reviewing and selection of papers. Besidesthecoretechnicalprogram,ECMLandPKDDhad6invitedspeakers, 10 workshops, 8 tutorials and a Knowledge Discovery Challenge.