Advances in Intelligent Systems

The field of Intelligent Systems has expanded enormously in the two decades up to 1999, with many theoretical and practical results available - the outcome of the synergetic merging of classical fields such as system theory, artificial intelligence, information theory, soft computing, operations research, linguistic theory and others. This book presents a collection of contributions that cover a wide range of topics within the field. It contains 47 contributions with an emphasis on computational and processing issues and is structured in four parts, as follows: Part I - Computer-aided intelligent systems and tools; Part II - Information extraction from texts, natural language interfaces and intelligent retrieval systems; Part III - Image processing and video-based systems; and Part IV - Applications. Particular topics treated include: planning; problem solving; information extraction from texts; natural language interfaces; audio retrieval systems; multi-agent systems; image compression, image and segmentation, and human face recognition. Applications include: peri-urban road network extraction; analysis of structures; climatic sensor signal analysis; aortic pressure assessment; hospital laboratory planning; fatigue analysis using electromyographic signals; forecasting in power systems. The book can serve as a reference pool of knowledge that may inspire and motivate researchers and practitioners for further developments and modern-day applications.