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Soft computing techniques have reached a significant level of recognition and - ceptance from both the academic and industrial communities. The papers collected in this volume illustrate the depth of the current theoretical research trends and the breadth of the application areas in which soft computing methods are making c- tributions. This volume consists of forty six selected papers presented at the Fourth Inter- tional Conference on Recent Advances in Soft Computing, which was held in N- th th tingham, United Kingdom on 12 and 13 December 2002 at Nottingham Trent University. This volume is organized in five parts. The first four parts address mainly the f- damental and theoretical advances in soft computing, namely Artificial Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computing, Fuzzy Systems and Hybrid Systems. The fifth part of this volume presents papers that deal with practical issues and ind- trial applications of soft computing techniques. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the authors who submitted contributions for inclusion. We are also indebted to Janusz Kacprzyk for his - vices related to this volume. We hope you find the volume an interesting refl- tion of current theoretical and application based soft computing research.

This Festschrift volume is published in honor of Takao Terano on the occasion of his retirement. Takao Terano is a leading expert in the areas of agent-based modelling, knowledge systems, evolutionary computation, and service science.The contributions in this volume reflect the breadth and impact of his work. The volume contains 12 full papers related to Takao Terano's research. They deal with various aspects of artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, collaborative and social computing, social networks, ubiquitous computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th Dortmund Fuzzy Days, held in Dortmund, Germany, 2006. The Fuzzy Days conference has established itself as an international forum for the discussion of new results in the field of Computational Intelligence. All the papers had to undergo a thorough review guaranteeing a solid quality of the programme. The papers are devoted to foundational and practical issues in fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, and machine learning and thus cover the whole range of computational intelligence.

ISDA'03 General Chair's Message On behalf of the ISDA'03 organizing committee, I wish to extend a very warm welcome to the conference and Tulsa in August 2003. The conference program committee has organized an exciting and invigorating program comprising pres­ entations from distinguished experts in the field, and important and wide-ranging contributions on state-of-the-art research that provide new insights into'Current Innovations in Intelligent Systems Design and Applications'. ISDA'03 builds on the success of last years. ISDA'02 was held in Atlanta, USA, August 07-08,2002 and attracted participants from over 25 countries. ISDA'03, the Third International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, held during August 10-13, 2003, in Tulsa, USA presents a rich and exciting program. The main themes addressed by this conference are: Architectures of intelligent systems Image, speech and signal processing Internet modeling Data mining Business and management applications Control and automation Software agents Knowledge management ISDA'03 is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences, Oklahoma State Univer­ sity, USA. ISDA'03 is technically sponsored by IEEE Systems Man and Cyber­ netics Society, World Federation on Soft Computing, European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology, Springer Verlag- Germany, Center of Excellence in In­ formation Technology and Telecommunications (COEITT) and Oklahoma State University. ISDA'03 received 117 technical paper submissions from over 28 countries, 7 tutorials, 3 special technical sessions and 1 workshop proposal.

This volume presents state-of-the-art complementarity applications, algorithms, extensions and theory in the form of eighteen papers. These at the International Conference on Com­ invited papers were presented plementarity 99 (ICCP99) held in Madison, Wisconsin during June 9-12, 1999 with support from the National Science Foundation under Grant DMS-9970102. Complementarity is becoming more widely used in a variety of appli­ cation areas. In this volume, there are papers studying the impact of complementarity in such diverse fields as deregulation of electricity mar­ kets, engineering mechanics, optimal control and asset pricing. Further­ more, application of complementarity and optimization ideas to related problems in the burgeoning fields of machine learning and data mining are also covered in a series of three articles. In order to effectively process the complementarity problems that arise in such applications, various algorithmic, theoretical and computational extensions are covered in this volume. Nonsmooth analysis has an im­ portant role to play in this area as can be seen from articles using these tools to develop Newton and path following methods for constrained nonlinear systems and complementarity problems. Convergence issues are covered in the context of active set methods, global algorithms for pseudomonotone variational inequalities, successive convex relaxation and proximal point algorithms. Theoretical contributions to the connectedness of solution sets and constraint qualifications in the growing area of mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints are also presented. A relaxation approach is given for solving such problems. Finally, computational issues related to preprocessing mixed complementarity problems are addressed.

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the international conference on Nonlinear Mathematics for Uncertainty and Its Applications (NLMUA2011), held at Beijing University of Technology during the week of September 7--9, 2011. The conference brought together leading researchers and practitioners involved with all aspects of nonlinear mathematics for uncertainty and its applications.Over the last fifty years there have been many attempts in extending the theory of classical probability and statistical models to the generalized one which can cope with problems of inference and decision making when the model-related information is scarce, vague, ambiguous, or incomplete. Such attempts include the study of nonadditive measures and their integrals, imprecise probabilities and random sets, and their applications in information sciences, economics, finance, insurance, engineering, and social sciences.The book presents topics including nonadditive measures and nonlinear integrals, Choquet, Sugeno and other types of integrals, possibility theory, Dempster-Shafer theory, random sets, fuzzy random sets and related statistics, set-valued and fuzzy stochastic processes, imprecise probability theory and related statistical models, fuzzy mathematics, nonlinear functional analysis, information theory, mathematical finance and risk managements, decision making under various types of uncertainty, and others.

Soft Computing admits approximate reasoning, imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth in order to mimic aspects of the remarkable human capability of making decisions in real-life and ambiguous environments.'Soft Computing in Industrial Applications'contains a collection of papers that were presented at the 11th On-line World Conference on Soft Computing in Industrial Applications, held in September-October 2006. This carefully edited book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advances in the industrial applications of soft computing and covers a wide range of application areas, including data analysis and data mining, computer graphics, intelligent control, systems, pattern recognition, classifiers, as well as modeling optimization. The book is aimed at researchers and practitioners who are engaged in developing and applying intelligent systems principles to solving real-world problems. It is also suitable as wider reading for science and engineering postgraduate students.

Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems (HAIS) combines symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques to construct more robust and reliable problem solving models. This volume focused on'Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems'contains a collection of papers that were presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems, held in 12 - 13 November, 2007, Salamanca, Spain. This carefully edited book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advances in the hybrid intelligent systems and covers a wide range of application areas, including data analysis and data mining, intelligent control, pattern recognition, robotics, optimization, etc. The book is aimed at researchers, practitioners and postgraduate students who are engaged in developing and applying advanced intelligent systems principles to solving real-world problems.

The series of Online World Conferences on Soft Computing (WSC) is organized by the World Federation of Soft Computing (WFSC) and has become an established annual event in the academic calendar and was already held for the 8th time in 2003. Starting as a small workshop held at Nagoya University, Japan in 1994 it has - tured to the premier online event on soft computing in industrial applications. It has been hosted by the universities of Granada, Spain, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Berlin, Cran?eld University, Helsinki University of Technology and Nagoya University. The goal of WFSC is to promote soft computing across the world, by using the internet as a forum for virtual technical discussion and publishing at no cost to authors and participants. The of?cial journal of the World Federation on Soft Computing is the journal Applied Soft Computing. The 8th WSC Conference (WSC8) took place from September 29th to October 10th, 2003. Registered participants had the opportunity to follow and discuss the online presentations of authors from all over the world. Out of more than 60 subm- sions the program committee had accepted 27 papers for?nal presentation at WSC8.

This book, which goes far beyond a traditional collection of technical articles, is dedicated to Enric Trillas, a fuzzy systems pioneer but also an internationally renowned researcher in other areas of science, such as mathematics and aerospace, and an outstanding manager of scientific affairs in Spain. Some of the contributions in this book develop technical, state-of-the-art themes obviously related to fuzzy logic, while others resemble popular-science articles that shed light on complex mathematical concepts. There are also chapters that highlight the authors'personal relationships and experiences working with Enric Trillas. While planning this book project, the editors decided to give contributors absolute freedom of thought and expression in preparing their chapters. The result is a colorful and inspiring mixture of styles and topics, which perfectly reflects Enric Trillas's multifaceted contributions to research and his outstanding role in promoting education and technological transfer in the field of soft computing. This Festschrift to Enric Trillas, published on the occasion of his 75th birthday, is not only intended as an exemplary source of information for young scientists dealing with uncertainty, imprecision and accuracy of models, but also as an inspiring guide to the role of scientists in education, politics and communication.

The analysis of experimental data resulting from some underlying random process is a fundamental part of most scientific research. Probability Theory and Statistics have been developed as flexible tools for this analyis, and have been applied successfully in various fields such as Biology, Economics, Engineering, Medicine or Psychology. However, traditional techniques in Probability and Statistics were devised to model only a singe source of uncertainty, namely randomness. In many real-life problems randomness arises in conjunction with other sources, making the development of additional'softening'approaches essential. This book is a collection of papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics (SMPS'2004) held in Oviedo, providing a comprehensive overview of the innovative new research taking place within this emerging field.

A strong and fluent competency in mathematics is a necessary condition for scientific, technological and economic progress. However, it is widely recognized that problem solving, reasoning, and thinking processes are critical areas in which students'performance lags far behind what should be expected and desired. Mathematics is indeed an important subject, but is also important to be able to use it in extra-mathematical contexts. Thinking strictly in terms of mathematics or thinking in terms of its relations with the real world involve quite different processes and issues. This book includes the revised papers presented at the NATO ARW'Information Technology and Mathematical Problem Solving Research', held in April 1991, in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, which focused on the implications of computerized learning environments and cognitive psychology research for these mathematical activities. In recent years, several committees, professional associations, and distinguished individuals throughout the world have put forward proposals to renew mathematics curricula, all emphasizing the importance of problem solving. In order to be successful, these reforming intentions require a theory-driven research base. But mathematics problem solving may be considered a'chaotic field'in which progress has been quite slow.

This book represents the combined peer-reviewed proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing -- IDC 2010 and of the Second International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Technology and Semantics -- MASTS'2010. Both events were held in Tangier, Morocco during September 16-18, 2010. The 33 contributions published in this book address many topics related to theory and applications of intelligent distributed computing and multi-agent systems, including: agent-based e-business, ambient intelligence, bio-informatics, collaborative systems, cryptography and security, distributed algorithms, distributed data mining, distributed simulation, grid computing, image processing, information extraction, knowledge management, logic programming, mobile agents, ontologies, pervasive computing, Petri nets, process modeling, self-organizing systems, semantic web services, service oriented computing, social networks and trust, swarm intelligence, web applications, wireless sensor networks.

Intelligent computing is becoming a mature?eld of information and communication technology, covering a hybrid palette of methods and techniques derived from clas- cal arti?cial intelligence, computational intelligence, multi-agent systems etc. Int- ligent computing is generally known to be computationally intensive from the point of view of resources required: time, memory, bandwidth. As such high resource c- sumption is one of its main drawbacks, distributed computing is expected to give an impetus to its practical utilization. Moreover, intelligent techniques have also proved their usefulness to the core distributed computing technologies like planning and scheduling, load balancing, replication, resource allocation and management, and its applications. Therefore, the emerging?eld of intelligent distributed computing can be expected both, to bring a fruitful cooperation and to pose new challenges of adaptation of both areas. Intelligent and Distributed Computing 2007 – IDC 2007 was the?rst Inter- tional Symposium aimed at bringing together researchers involved in intelligent and distributed computing to allow cross-fertilization and search for synergies of ideas and to enable advancement of research in these exciting sub-?elds of computer s- ence. IDC was started as an initiative of research groups from: (i) Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland and (ii) Software Engine- ing Department of the University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania. IDC 2007 was held in Craiova, Romania during October 18-19, 2007. This book represents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the IDC 2007. We - ceived 52 submissions from 24 countries.

The German Workshop on Robotics is a convention of roboticists from academia and industry working on mathematical and algorithmic foundations of robotics, on the design and analysis of robotic systems as well as on robotic applications. Selected contributions from researchers in German-speaking countries as well as from the international robotics community compose this volume. The papers are organized in ten scientific tracks: Kinematic and Dynamic Modeling, Motion Generation, Sensor Integration, Robot Vision, Robot Programming, Humanoid Robots, Grasping, Medical Robotics, Autonomous Helicopters, and Robot Applications. Due to an extensive review and discussion process, this collection of scientific contributions is of very high caliber and promises to strongly influence future robotic research activities.

Intelligent computing covers a hybrid palette of methods and techniques - rived from classical arti?cial intelligence, computational intelligence, multi-agent systems a.o. Distributed computing studies systems that contain loosely-coupled components running on networked computers and that c- municateandcoordinatetheiractionsbyexchangeofmessages.Theemergent?eld of intelligent distributed computing is expected to pose special ch- lenges of adaptation and fruitful combination of results of both areas with a great impact on the development of new generation intelligent distributed information systems. Intelligent Distributed Computing – IDC Symposium Series was started as an initiative of research groups from: (i) Systems Research Institute, P- ish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland and (ii) Software Engineering Department of the University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania. IDC aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners involved in all aspects of - telligent distributed computing. IDC 2009 was the third event in this series and was hosted by Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus in Ayia Napa, Cyprus during October 13-14, 2009.

This book represents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing – IDC 2008 held in Catania, Italy during September 18-19, 2008. The 35 contributions in this book address many topics related to intelligent and distributed computing, systems and applications, including: adaptivity and learning; agents and multi-agent systems; argumentation; auctions; case-based reasoning; collaborative systems; data structures; distributed algorithms; formal modeling and verification; genetic and immune algorithms; grid computing; information extraction, annotation and integration; network and security protocols; mobile and ubiquitous computing; ontologies and metadata; P2P computing; planning; recommender systems; rules; semantic Web; services and processes; trust and social computing; virtual organizations; wireless networks; XML technologies.

Knowledge-Driven Computing constitutes an emerging area of intensive research located at the intersection of Computational Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering with strong mathematical foundations. It embraces methods and approaches coming from diverse computational paradigms, such as evolutionary computation and nature-inspired algorithms, logic programming and constraint programming, rule-based systems, fuzzy sets and many others. The use of various knowledge representation formalisms and knowledge processing and computing paradigms is oriented towards the efficient resolution of computationally complex and difficult problems. The main aim of this volume has been to gather together a selection of recent papers providing new ideas and solutions for a wide spectrum of Knowledge-Driven Computing approaches. More precisely, the ultimate goal has been to collect new knowledge representation, processing and computing paradigms which could be useful to practitioners involved in the area of discussion. To this end, contributions covering both theoretical aspects and practical solutions, and dealing with topics of interest for a wide audience, and/or cross-disciplinary research were preferred.

Clustering has been around for many decades and located itself in a uniquepositionasafundamentalconceptualandalgorithmiclandmark of data analysis. Almost since the very inception of fuzzy sets, the role and potential of these information granules in revealing and describing structureindatawasfullyacknowledgedandappreciated.Asamatter of fact, with the rapid growth of volumes of digital information, the role of clustering becomes even more visible and critical. Furthermore given the anticipated human centricity of the majority of artifacts of digitaleraandacontinuousbuildupofmountainsofdata,onebecomes fully cognizant of the growing role and an enormous potential of fuzzy sets and granular computing in the design of intelligent systems. In therecentyearsclusteringhasundergoneasubstantialmetamorphosis. Frombeinganexclusivelydata drivenpursuit,ithastransformeditself into a vehicle whose data centricity has been substantially augmented by the incorporation of domain knowledge thus giving rise to the next generation of knowledge-oriented and collaborative clustering. Interestingly enough, fuzzy clustering exhibits a dominant role in many developments of the technology of fuzzy sets including fuzzy modeling, fuzzy control, data mining, pattern recognition, and image processing. When browsing through numerous papers on fuzzy m- eling we can witness an important trend of a substantial reliance on fuzzy clustering being regarded as the general development tool. The same central position of fuzzy clustering becomes visible in pattern classi?ers and neurofuzzy systems. All in all, it becomes evident that further progress in fuzzy clustering is of vital relevance and bene?t to the overall progress of the area of fuzzy sets and their applications.

I think the next century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that govern matter and understand all the normal situations. We don't know how the laws?t together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will?nd a complete uni?ed theory sometime this century. There is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws. Stephen Hawking, January 2000. We don't know what we are talking about. Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory. But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break. The state of physics today is like it was when we were mysti?ed by radioactivity. They were missing something absolutely fundamental. We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then. Nobel Laureate David Gross, December 2005. This volume is essentially a compilation of papers presented at the Int- national Workshop on Mathematics and Physics of Complex and Nonlinear Systems that was held at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, March 14 – 26, 2004 on the theme ChaNoXity: The Nonlinear Dynamics of Nature.

This textbook introduces the reader to Machine Learning (ML) applications in Earth Sciences. In detail, it starts by describing the basics of machine learning and its potentials in Earth Sciences to solve geological problems. It describes the main Python tools devoted to ML, the typical workflow of ML applications in Earth Sciences, and proceeds with reporting how ML algorithms work. The book provides many examples of ML application to Earth Sciences problems in many fields, such as the clustering and dimensionality reduction in petro-volcanological studies, the clustering of multi-spectral data, well-log data facies classification, and machine learning regression in petrology. Also, the book introduces the basics of parallel computing and how to scale ML models in the cloud. The book is devoted to Earth Scientists, at any level, from students to academics and professionals.

The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science (ECSS, 2009) presented a comprehensive overview of granular computing (GrC) broadly divided into several categories: Granular computing from rough set theory, Granular Computing in Database Theory, Granular Computing in Social Networks, Granular Computing and Fuzzy Set Theory, Grid/Cloud Computing, as well as general issues in granular computing. In 2011, the formal theory of GrC was established, providing an adequate infrastructure to support revolutionary new approaches to computer/data science, including the challenges presented by so-called big data. For this volume of ECSS, Second Edition, many entries have been updated to capture these new developments, together with new chapters on such topics as data clustering, outliers in data mining, qualitative fuzzy sets, and information flow analysis for security applications. Granulations can be seen as a natural and ancient methodology deeply rooted in the human mind. Many daily'things'are routinely granulated into sub'things': The topography of earth is granulated into hills, plateaus, etc., space and time are granulated into infinitesimal granules, and a circle is granulated into polygons of infinitesimal sides. Such granules led to the invention of calculus, topology and non-standard analysis. Formalization of general granulation was difficult but, as shown in this volume, great progress has been made in combing discrete and continuous mathematics under one roof for a broad range of applications in data science.

This book presents the recent computational developments inspired by swarms in art known as swarm art and discusses applying swarm intelligence concepts in architecture. Non-human art is a great leap in the evolution of contemporary art, removing the requirement of an artist's production from the creative process. Furthermore, it is a critical declaration in opposition to the anthropomorphic vision which is so destructive for all other life forms and the planet's ecology. When accepted and integrated into human culture, non-human art done by artificial systems or machines boosts creativity and stimulates innovative fusions. We analyze 120 swarm systems with unique and diverse conceptual contexts, agent design, and audience engagement that can be utilized as inspiration for future projects or to design new swarm algorithms by artists, architects, or computer scientists.

This book explores the interdisciplinary field of complex systems theory. By the end of the book, readers will be able to understand terminology that is used in complex systems and how they are related to one another; see the patterns of complex systems in practical examples; map current topics, in a variety of fields, to complexity theory; and be able to read more advanced literature in the field. The book begins with basic systems concepts and moves on to how these simple rules can lead to complex behavior. The author then introduces non-linear systems, followed by pattern formation, and networks and information flow in systems. Later chapters cover the thermodynamics of complex systems, dynamical patterns that arise in networks, and how game theory can serve as a framework for decision making. The text is interspersed with both philosophical and quantitative arguments, and each chapter ends with questions and prompts that help readers make more connections.“The text provides a useful overview of complex systems, with enough detail to allow a reader unfamiliar with the topic to understand the basics. The book stands out for its comprehensiveness and approachability. It will be particularly useful as a text for introductory physics courses. Tranquillo's strength is in delivering a vast amount of information in a succinct manner.… A reader can find information quickly and efficiently—that is, in my opinion, the book's greatest value.” (Stefani Crabtree, Physics Today)

This book explores the most significant computational methods and the history of their development. It begins with the earliest mathematical / numerical achievements made by the Babylonians and the Greeks, followed by the period beginning in the 16th century. For several centuries the main scientific challenge concerned the mechanics of planetary dynamics, and the book describes the basic numerical methods of that time. In turn, at the end of the Second World War scientific computing took a giant step forward with the advent of electronic computers, which greatly accelerated the development of numerical methods. As a result, scientific computing became established as a third scientific method in addition to the two traditional branches: theory and experimentation. The book traces numerical methods'journey back to their origins and to the people who invented them, while also briefly examining the development of electronic computers over the years. Featuring 163 references and more than 100 figures, many of them portraits or photos of key historical figures, the book provides a unique historical perspective on the general field of scientific computing – making it a valuable resource for all students and professionals interested in the history of numerical analysis and computing, and for a broader readership alike.

This textbook helps future data analysts comprehend aggregation function theory and methods in an accessible way, focusing on a fundamental understanding of the data and summarization tools. Offering a broad overview of recent trends in aggregation research, it complements any study in statistical or machine learning techniques. Readers will learn how to program key functions in R without obtaining an extensive programming background.Sections of the textbook cover background information and context, aggregating data with averaging functions, power means, and weighted averages including the Borda count. It explains how to transform data using normalization or scaling and standardization, as well as log, polynomial, and rank transforms. The section on averaging with interaction introduces OWS functions and the Choquet integral, simple functions that allow the handling of non-independent inputs. The final chapters examine software analysis with an emphasison parameter identification rather than technical aspects.This textbook is designed for students studying computer science or business who are interested in tools for summarizing and interpreting data, without requiring a strong mathematical background. It is also suitable for those working on sophisticated data science techniques who seek a better conception of fundamental data aggregation. Solutions to the practice questions are included in the textbook.

This book presents a collection of results from the interdisciplinary research project “ELLI” published by researchers at RWTH Aachen University, the TU Dortmund and Ruhr-Universität Bochum between 2011 and 2016. All contributions showcase essential research results, concepts and innovative teaching methods to improve engineering education. Further, they focus on a variety of areas, including virtual and remote teaching and learning environments, student mobility, support throughout the student lifecycle, and the cultivation of interdisciplinary skills.

(Preliminary) The book is a comprehensive collection of the most recent and significant research and applications in the field of fuzzy logic. It covers fuzzy structures, systems, rules, operations as well as important applications, e.g in decision making, environmental prediction and prevention, and communication. It is dedicated to Enric Trillas as an acknowledgement for his pioneering research in the field. The book include a foreword by Lotfi A. Zadeh.

This book is concerned with important problems of robust (stable) statistical pat­ tern recognition when hypothetical model assumptions about experimental data are violated (disturbed). Pattern recognition theory is the field of applied mathematics in which prin­ ciples and methods are constructed for classification and identification of objects, phenomena, processes, situations, and signals, i. e., of objects that can be specified by a finite set of features, or properties characterizing the objects (Mathematical Encyclopedia (1984)). Two stages in development of the mathematical theory of pattern recognition may be observed. At the first stage, until the middle of the 1970s, pattern recogni­ tion theory was replenished mainly from adjacent mathematical disciplines: mathe­ matical statistics, functional analysis, discrete mathematics, and information theory. This development stage is characterized by successful solution of pattern recognition problems of different physical nature, but of the simplest form in the sense of used mathematical models. One of the main approaches to solve pattern recognition problems is the statisti­ cal approach, which uses stochastic models of feature variables. Under the statistical approach, the first stage of pattern recognition theory development is characterized by the assumption that the probability data model is known exactly or it is esti­ mated from a representative sample of large size with negligible estimation errors (Das Gupta, 1973, 1977), (Rey, 1978), (Vasiljev, 1983)).

Criticism is the habitus of the contemplative intellect, whereby we try to recognize with probability the genuine quality of a l- erary work by using appropriate aids and rules. In so doing, c- tain general and particular points must be considered. The art of interpretation or hermeneutics is the habitus of the contemplative intellect of probing into the sense of somewhat special text by using logical rules and suitable means. Note : Hermeneutics differs from criticism as the part does from the whole. Antonius Gvilielmus Amo Afer (1727) There is no such thing as absolute truth. At best it is a subj- tive criterion, but one based upon valuation. Unfortunately, too many people place their fate in the hands of subjective without properly evaluating it. Arnold A. Kaufmann and Madan M. Gupta The development of cost benefit analysis and the theory of fuzzy decision was divided into two inter-dependent structures of identification and measurement theory on one hand and fuzzy value theory one the other. Each of them has sub-theories that constitute a complete logical system.

Incorporation of a priori knowledge, such as expert knowledge, meta-heuristics and human preferences, as well as domain knowledge acquired during evolu­ tionary search, into evolutionary algorithms has received increasing interest in the recent years. It has been shown from various motivations that knowl­ edge incorporation into evolutionary search is able to significantly improve search efficiency. However, results on knowledge incorporation in evolution­ ary computation have been scattered in a wide range of research areas and a systematic handling of this important topic in evolutionary computation still lacks. This edited book is a first attempt to put together the state-of-art and re­ cent advances on knowledge incorporation in evolutionary computation within a unified framework. Existing methods for knowledge incorporation are di­ vided into the following five categories according to the functionality of the incorporated knowledge in the evolutionary algorithms. 1. Knowledge incorporation in representation, population initialization, - combination and mutation. 2. Knowledge incorporation in selection and reproduction. 3. Knowledge incorporation in fitness evaluations. 4. Knowledge incorporation through life-time learning and human-computer interactions. 5. Incorporation of human preferences in multi-objective evolutionary com­ putation. The intended readers of this book are graduate students, researchers and practitioners in all fields of science and engineering who are interested in evolutionary computation. The book is divided into six parts. Part I contains one introductory chapter titled'A selected introduction to evolutionary computation'by Yao, which presents a concise but insightful introduction to evolutionary computation.

Innovations in Intelligent Systems is a rare collection of the latest developments in intelligent paradigms such as knowledge-based systems, computational intelligence and hybrid combinations as well as practical applications in engineering, science, business and commerce. The book covers central topics such as intelligent multi-agent systems, data mining, case-based reasoning, and rough sets. Essential techniques to the development of intelligent machines are investigated such as pattern recognition and classification, machine learning, natural language processing, grammar, evolutionary schemes, fuzzy-neural procedures, and intelligent vision. The book also includes useful applications ranging from medical diagnosis and technical/medical language translation, to power demand forecasting and manufacturing plants. Due to its depth and breadth of the coverage and the usefulness of the techniques and applications, this book is a valuable reference for experts and students alike.

Search games and rendezvous problems have received growing attention in computer science within the past few years. Rendezvous problems emerge naturally, for instance, to optimize performance and convergence of mobile robots. This gives a new algorithmic point of view to the theory. Furthermore, modern topics such as the spreading of gossip or disease in social networks have lead to new challenging problems in search and rendezvous. Search Theory: A Game Theoretic Perspective introduces the first integrated approach to Search and Rendezvous from the perspectives of biologists, computer scientists and mathematicians. This contributed volume covers a wide range of topics including rendezvous problems and solutions, rendezvous on graphs, search games on biology, mobility in governed social networks, search and security, and more. Most chapters also include case studies or a survey, in addition to a chapter on the future direction of Search and Rendezvous research. This book targets researchers and practitioners working in computer science, mathematics and biology as a reference book. Advanced level students focused on these fields will also find this book valuable as a secondary text book or reference.

This research book presents the agent theory and adaptation of agents in different contexts. Agents of different orders of complexity must be autonomous in the rules used. The agent must have a brain by which it can discover rules contained within the data. Because rules are the instruments by which agents change the environment, any adaptation of the rules can be considered as an evolution of the agents. Because uncertainty is present in every context, we shall describe in this book how it is possible to introduce global uncertainty from the local world into the description of the rules. This book contains ten chapters. Chapter 1 gives a general dscription of the evolutionary adaptation agent. Chapter 2 describes the actions and meta­ actions of the agent at different orders. Chapter 3 presents in an abstract and formal way the actions at different orders. Chapter 4 connects systems and meta systems with the adaptive agent. Chapter 5 describes the brain of the agent by the morphogenetic neuron theory. Chapter 6 introduces the logic structure of the adaptive agent. Chapter 7 describes the feedback and hyper-feedback in the adaptive agent. Chapter 8 introduces the adaptation field into the modal logic space as logic instrument in the adaptive agent. Chapter 9 describes the action of the agent in the physical domain. Chapter 10 presents the practical application of agents in robots and evolutionary computing.

Formal Languages and Applications provides a comprehensive study-aid and self-tutorial for graduates students and researchers. The main results and techniques are presented in an readily accessible manner and accompanied by many references and directions for further research. This carefully edited monograph is intended to be the gateway to formal language theory and its applications, so it is very useful as a review and reference source of information in formal language theory.

The book aims at surveying results in the application of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic to economics and engineering. New results include fuzzy non-linear regression, fully fuzzified linear programming, fuzzy multi-period control, fuzzy network analysis, each using an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy queuing decision analysis using possibility theory; fuzzy differential equations; fuzzy difference equations; fuzzy partial differential equations; fuzzy eigenvalues based on an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy hierarchical analysis using an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy integral equations. Other important topics covered are fuzzy input-output analysis; fuzzy mathematics of finance; fuzzy PERT (project evaluation and review technique). No previous knowledge of fuzzy sets is needed. The mathematical background is assumed to be elementary calculus.

Data fusion or information fusion are names which have been primarily assigned to military-oriented problems. In military applications, typical data fusion problems are: multisensor, multitarget detection, object identification, tracking, threat assessment, mission assessment and mission planning, among many others. However, it is clear that the basic underlying concepts underlying such fusion procedures can often be used in nonmilitary applications as well. The purpose of this book is twofold: First, to point out present gaps in the way data fusion problems are conceptually treated. Second, to address this issue by exhibiting mathematical tools which treat combination of evidence in the presence of uncertainty in a more systematic and comprehensive way. These techniques are based essentially on two novel ideas relating to probability theory: the newly developed fields of random set theory and conditional and relational event algebra. This volume is intended to be both an update on research progress on data fusion and an introduction to potentially powerful new techniques: fuzzy logic, random set theory, and conditional and relational event algebra. Audience: This volume can be used as a reference book for researchers and practitioners in data fusion or expert systems theory, or for graduate students as text for a research seminar or graduate level course.

Decision makers in managerial and public organizations often encounter de­ cision problems under conflict or competition, because they select strategies independently or by mutual agreement and therefore their payoffs are then affected by the strategies of the other decision makers. Their interests do not always coincide and are at times even completely opposed. Competition or partial cooperation among decision makers should be considered as an essen­ tial part of the problem when we deal with the decision making problems in organizations which consist of decision makers with conflicting interests. Game theory has been dealing with such problems and its techniques have been used as powerful analytical tools in the resolution process of the decision problems. The publication of the great work by J. von Neumann and O. Morgen­ stern in 1944 attracted attention of many people and laid the foundation of game theory. We can see remarkable advances in the field of game theory for analysis of economic situations and a number of books in the field have been published in recent years. The aim of game theory is to specify the behavior of each player so as to optimize the interests of the player. It then recommends a set of solutions as strategies so that the actions chosen by each decision maker (player) lead to an outcome most profitable for himself or her­ self.

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence researchers have largely focused their efforts on solving specific problems, with less emphasis on'the big picture'- automating large scale tasks which require human-level intelligence to undertake. The subject of this book, automated theory formation in mathematics, is such a large scale task. Automated theory formation requires the invention of new concepts, the calculating of examples, the making of conjectures and the proving of theorems. This book, representing four years of PhD work by Dr. Simon Colton demonstrates how theory formation can be automated. Building on over 20 years of research into constructing an automated mathematician carried out in Professor Alan Bundy's mathematical reasoning group in Edinburgh, Dr. Colton has implemented the HR system as a solution to the problem of forming theories by computer. HR uses various pieces of mathematical software, including automated theorem provers, model generators and databases, to build a theory from the bare minimum of information - the axioms of a domain. The main application of this work has been mathematical discovery, and HR has had many successes. In particular, it has invented 20 new types of number of sufficient interest to be accepted into the Encyclopaedia of Integer Sequences, a repository of over 60,000 sequences contributed by many (human) mathematicians.

The book is on the geometry of agent knowledge. The important concept studied in this book is the Field and its Geometric Representation. To develop a geometric image of the gravity, Einstein used Tensor Calculus but this is very different from the knowledge instruments used now, as for instance techniques of data mining, neural networks, formal concept analysis,quantum computer and other topics. The aim of this book is to rebuild the tensor calculus in order to give a geometric representation of agent knowledge. By using a new geometry of knowledge we can unify all the topics that have been studied in recent years to create a bridge between the geometric representation of the physical phenomena and the geometric representation of the individual and subjective knowledge of the agents.

This book presents the application of some AI related optimization techniques in the operation and control of electric power systems. With practical applications and examples the use of functional analysis, simulated annealing, Tabu-search, Genetic algorithms and fuzzy systems for the optimization of power systems is discussed in detail. Preliminary mathematical concepts are presented before moving to more advanced material. Researchers and graduate students will benefit from this book. Engineers working in utility companies, operations and control, and resource management will also find this book useful. ​

Soft computing is playing an increasing role in the study of complex systems in science and engineering. There is a large spectrum of successful applications of soft computing in very different applications domains such as aerospace, communication, consumer appliances, electric power systems, process engineering, transportation, and manufacturing automation and robotics. It has taken a while to bring the early ideas of soft computing to an area and a discipline that seems to be more than appropriate for that. Here it is! This book studies SOFT computing in SOFTware engineering environment. The book is HARD in terms of its results. It covers a range of core topics from software engineering that are soft from its very nature: selection of components, software design, software reuse, software cost estimation and software processes. Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in its ability to be tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation. The guiding principle of soft computing is: Exploit the tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation to achieve tractability, robustness and low solution cost. The role model for soft computing is the human mind. This seems to be a natural fit with software engineering, a human-based development activity based on sound engineering principles. A recent survey by researchers reveals that'Software Engineering research tends to be quite self-contained, not relying on other disciplines for its thinking'.

Over the last few decades, research on handwriting recognition has made impressive progress. The research and development on handwritten word recognition are to a large degree motivated by many application areas, such as automated postal address and code reading, data acquisition in banks, text-voice conversion, security, etc. As the prices of scanners, com­ puters and handwriting-input devices are falling steadily, we have seen an increased demand for handwriting recognition systems and software pack­ ages. Some commercial handwriting recognition systems are now available in the market. Current commercial systems have an impressive performance in recognizing machine-printed characters and neatly written texts. For in­ stance, High-Tech Solutions in Israel has developed several products for container ID recognition, car license plate recognition and package label recognition. Xerox in the U. S. has developed TextBridge for converting hardcopy documents into electronic document files. In spite of the impressive progress, there is still a significant perfor­ mance gap between the human and the machine in recognizing off-line unconstrained handwritten characters and words. The difficulties encoun­ tered in recognizing unconstrained handwritings are mainly caused by huge variations in writing styles and the overlapping and the interconnection of neighboring characters. Furthermore, many applications demand very high recognition accuracy and reliability. For example, in the banking sector, although automated teller machines (ATMs) and networked banking sys­ tems are now widely available, many transactions are still carried out in the form of cheques.

The field called Learning Classifier Systems is populated with romantics. Why shouldn't it be possible for computer programs to adapt, learn, and develop while interacting with their environments? In particular, why not systems that, like organic populations, contain competing, perhaps cooperating, entities evolving together? John Holland was one of the earliest scientists with this vision, at a time when so-called artificial intelligence was in its infancy and mainly concerned with preprogrammed systems that didn't learn. that, like organisms, had sensors, took Instead, Holland envisaged systems actions, and had rich self-generated internal structure and processing. In so doing he foresaw and his work prefigured such present day domains as reinforcement learning and embedded agents that are now displacing the older'standard Af'. One focus was what Holland called'classifier systems': sets of competing rule­ like'classifiers', each a hypothesis as to how best to react to some aspect of the environment--or to another rule. The system embracing such a rule'popu­ lation'would explore its available actions and responses, rewarding and rating the active rules accordingly. Then'good'classifiers would be selected and re­ produced, mutated and even crossed, a la Darwin and genetics, steadily and reliably increasing the system's ability to cope.

Fuzzy logic provides a unique method of approximate reasoning in an imperfect world. This text is a bridge to the principles of fuzzy logic through an application-focused approach to selected topics in Engineering and Management. The many examples point to the richer solutions obtained through fuzzy logic and to the possibilities of much wider applications. There are relatively few texts available at present in fuzzy logic applications. The style and content of this text is complementary to those already available. New areas of application are presented in a graded approach in which the underlying concepts are first described. The text is broadly divided into two parts which treat Processes and Materials and also System Applications. The level enables a selection of the text to be made for the substance of a senior undergraduate level course. There is also sufficient volume and quality for the basis of a postgraduate course. A more restricted and judicious selection can provide the material for a professional short course.

Genetic Algorithms (GA) as a tool for a search and optimizing methodology has now reached a mature stage. It has found many useful applications in both the scientific and engineering arenas. The main reason for this success is undoubtedly due to the advances that have been made in solid-state microelectronics fabrication that have, in turn, led to the proliferation of widely available, low cost, and speedy computers. The GA works on the Darwinian principle of natural selection for which the noted English philosopher, Herbert Spencer coined the phrase'Survival of the fittest'. As a numerical optimizer, the solutions obtained by the GA are not mathematically oriented. Instead, GA possesses an intrinsic flexibility and the freedom to choose desirable optima according to design specifications. Whether the criteria of concern be nonlinear, constrained, discrete, multimodal, or NP hard, the GA is entirely equal to the challenge. In fact, because of the uniqueness of the evolutionary process and the gene structure of a chromosome, the GA processing mechanism can take the form ofparallelism and multiobjective. These provide an extra dimension for solutions where other techniques may have failed completely. It is, therefore, the aim ofthis booktogather together relevant GA materialthat has already been used and demonstrated in various engineering disciplines.

The authors have been beguiled and entranced by mathematics all of their lives, and both believe it is the highest expression of pure thought and an essential component-one might say the quintessence-of nature. How else can one ex­ plain the remarkable effectiveness of mathematics in describing and predicting the physical world? The projection of the mathematical method onto the subspace of human endeav­ 1 ors has long been a source of societal progress and commercial technology. The invention of the electronic digital computer (not the mechanical digital computer of Babbage) has made the role of mathematics in civilization even more central by making mathematics active in the operation of products. The writing of this book was intertwined with the development of a start-up company, Aware, Inc. Aware was founded in 1987 by one of the authors (H.L.R.), and the second author (R.O.W.) put his shoulder to the wheel as a consultant soon after.

Humanity's most basic intellectual quest to decipher nature and master it has led to numerous efforts to build machines that simulate the world or communi­ cate with it [Bus70, Tur36, MP43, Sha48, vN56, Sha41, Rub89, NK91, Nyc92]. The computational power and dynamic behavior of such machines is a central question for mathematicians, computer scientists, and occasionally, physicists. Our interest is in computers called artificial neural networks. In their most general framework, neural networks consist of assemblies of simple processors, or'neurons,'each of which computes a scalar activation function of its input. This activation function is nonlinear, and is typically a monotonic function with bounded range, much like neural responses to input stimuli. The scalar value produced by a neuron affects other neurons, which then calculate a new scalar value of their own. This describes the dynamical behavior of parallel updates. Some of the signals originate from outside the network and act as inputs to the system, while other signals are communicated back to the environment and are thus used to encode the end result of the computation.

Finding exact solutions to many combinatorial optimization problems in busi­ ness, engineering, and science still poses a real challenge, despite the impact of recent advances in mathematical programming and computer technology. New fields of applications, such as computational biology, electronic commerce, and supply chain management, bring new challenges and needs for algorithms and optimization techniques. Metaheuristics are master procedures that guide and modify the operations of subordinate heuristics, to produce improved approx­ imate solutions to hard optimization problems with respect to more simple algorithms. They also provide fast and robust tools, producing high-quality solutions in reasonable computation times. The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Tech­ niques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimiza­ tion problems. A very large nmnber of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry.

The rise in computing and multimedia technology has spawned an increasing interest in the role of diagrams and sketches, not only for the purpose of conveying information but also for creative thinking and problem-solving. This book attempts to characterise the nature of'a science of diagrams'in a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary study that contains accounts of the most recent research results in computer science and psychology. Key topics include: cognitive aspects, formal aspects, and applications. It is a well-written and indispensable survey for researchers and students in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and graphics and visualisation.