This book presents carefully selected contributions devoted to the modern perspective of AI research and innovation. This collection covers several areas of applications and motivates new research directions. The theme across all chapters combines several domains of AI research, Computational Intelligence and Machine Intelligence including an introduction to the recent research and models. Each of the subsequent chapters reveals leading edge research and innovative solution that employ AI techniques with an applied perspective. The problems include classification of spatial images, early smoke detection in outdoor space from video images, emergent segmentation from image analysis, intensity modification in images, multi-agent modeling and analysis of stress. They all are novel pieces of work and demonstrate how AI research contributes to solutions for difficult real world problems that benefit the research community, industry and society.

Digital systems that bring together the computing capacity for processing large bodies of information with the human cognitive capability are called intelligent systems. Building these systems has become one of the great goals of modem technology. This goal has both intellectual and economic incentives. The need for such intelligent systems has become more intense in the face of the global connectivity of the internet. There has become an almost insatiable requirement for instantaneous information and decision brought about by this confluence of computing and communication. This requirement can only be satisfied by the construction of innovative intelligent systems. A second and perhaps an even more significant development is the great advances being made in genetics and related areas of biotechnology. Future developments in biotechnology may open the possibility for the development of a true human-silicon interaction at the micro level, neural and cellular, bringing about a need for "intelligent" systems. What is needed to further the development of intelligent systems are tools to enable the representation of human cognition in a manner that allows formal manipulation. The idea of developing such an algebra goes back to Leibniz in the 17th century with his dream of a calculus ratiocinator. It wasn't until two hundred years later beginning with the work of Boole, Cantor and Frege that a formal mathematical logic for modeling human reasoning was developed. The introduction of the modem digital computer during the Second World War by von Neumann and others was a culmination of this intellectual trend.

This book illustrates the rapid pace of development in intelligent assistive technology in recent years, and highlights some salient examples of using modern IT&C technologies to provide devices, systems and application software for persons with certain motor or cognitive disabilities. The book proposes both theoretical and practical approaches to intelligent assistive and emergent technologies used in healthcare for the elderly and patients with chronic diseases. Intelligent assistive technology (IAT) is currently being introduced and developed worldwide as an important tool for maintaining independence and high quality of life among community-living people with certain disabilities, and as a key enabler for the aging population. The book offers a valuable resource for students at technical, medical and general universities, but also for specialists working in various fields in which emergent technologies are being used to help people enjoy optimal quality of life.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely known as a knowledge field that aims to make computers, robots, or products that mimic the way humans think. In the current scientific community, AI is an intensively studied area composed of multiple branches. Historically, machine learning and optimization are two of the most studied fronts thanks to the development of novel and challenging research topics such as transfer optimization, swarm robotics, and drift detection and adaptation to evolving conditions in real-time. This book collects radically new theoretical insights, reporting recent developments and evincing innovative applications regarding AI methods in all fields of knowledge. It also presents works focused on new paradigms and novel branches of AI science.

This volume details the latest state-of-the-art research on computational intelligence paradigms in healthcare in the intelligent agent environment. The book presents seven chapters selected from the rapidly growing application areas of computational intelligence to healthcare systems. These include intelligent synthetic characters, man-machine interface, menu generators, analysis of user acceptance, pictures archiving and communication systems.