This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2004, held in Auckland, New Zealand in August 2004. The 94 revised full papers and 45 revised poster papers presented together with 3 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 356 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on logic and reasoning, knowledge representation and search, ontologies, planning, constraint satisfaction, machine learning, computational learning, Bayesian networks, evolutionary computing, neural networks, fuzzy logic, data mining, classification and clustering, case-based reasoning, information retrieval, agent technology, robotics, bioinformatics, image processing and computer vision, natural language processing, and speech understanding and interaction.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th Australian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AI 2004, held in Cairns, Australia, in December 2004. The 78 revised full papers and 62 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 340 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agents; biomedical applications; computer vision, image processing, and pattern recognition; ontologies, knowledge discovery and data mining; natural language and speech processing; problem solving and reasoning; robotics; and soft computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AI 2006, held in Hobart, Australia, December 2006. Coverage includes foundations and knowledge based system, machine learning, connectionist AI, data mining, intelligent agents, cognition and user interface, vision and image processing, natural language processing and Web intelligence, neural networks, robotics, and AI applications.

Using a visual data analysis approach, wavelet concepts are explained in a way that is intuitive and easy to understand. Furthermore, in addition to wavelets, a whole range of related signal processing techniques such as wavelet packets, local cosine analysis, and matching pursuits are covered, and applications of wavelet analysis are illustrated -including nonparametric function estimation, digital image compression, and time-frequency signal analysis. This book and software package is intended for a broad range of data analysts, scientists, and engineers. While most textbooks on the subject presuppose advanced training in mathematics, this book merely requires that readers be familiar with calculus and linear algebra at the undergraduate level.

The 18th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2005) was held at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia from 5 to 9 December 2005. AI 2005 attracted a historical record number of submissions, a total of 535 papers. The review process was extremely selective. Out of these 535 submissions, the Program Chairs selected only 77 (14.4%) full papers and 119 (22.2%) short papers based on the review reports, making an acceptance rate of 36.6% in total. Authors of the accepted papers came from over 20 countries. This volume of the proceedings contains the abstracts of three keynote speeches and all the full and short papers. The full papers were categorized into three broad sections, namely: AI foundations and technologies, computational intelligence, and AI in specialized domains. AI 2005 also hosted several tutorials and workshops, providing an interacting mode for specialists and scholars from Australia and other countries. Ronald R. Yager, Geoff Webb and David Goldberg (in conjunction with ACAL05) were the distinguished researchers invited to give presentations. Their contributions to AI 2005 are really appreciated.

Space and time are inextricably linked. Reasoning about space often involves reasoning about change in spatial configurations. Qualitative spatial information theory encompasses spatial as well as temporal representation and reasoning. Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representation and Reasoning: Trends and Future Directions is a contribution to the emerging discipline of qualitative spatial information theory within artificial intelligence. This collection of research covers both theory and application-centric research and provides a comprehensive perspective on the emerging area of qualitative spatio-temporal representation and reasoning. This revolutionary new field is increasingly becoming a core issue within mobile computing, GIS/spatial information systems, databases, computer vision as well as knowledge discovery and data mining.

Pattern recognition is a very wide research field. It involves factors as diverse as sensors, feature extraction, pattern classification, decision fusion, applications and others. The signals processed are commonly one, two or three dimensional, the processing is done in real- time or takes hours and days, some systems look for one narrow object class, others search huge databases for entries with at least a small amount of similarity. No single person can claim expertise across the whole field, which develops rapidly, updates its paradigms and comprehends several philosophical approaches. This book reflects this diversity by presenting a selection of recent developments within the area of pattern recognition and related fields. It covers theoretical advances in classification and feature extraction as well as application-oriented works. Authors of these 25 works present and advocate recent achievements of their research related to the field of pattern recognition.

Reinforcement learning has developed as a successful learning approach for domains that are not fully understood and that are too complex to be described in closed form. However, reinforcement learning does not scale well to large and continuous problems. Furthermore, acquired knowledge specific to the learned task, and transfer of knowledge to new tasks is crucial. In this book the author investigates whether deficiencies of reinforcement learning can be overcome by suitable abstraction methods. He discusses various forms of spatial abstraction, in particular qualitative abstraction, a form of representing knowledge that has been thoroughly investigated and successfully applied in spatial cognition research. With his approach, he exploits spatial structures and structural similarity to support the learning process by abstracting from less important features and stressing the essential ones. The author demonstrates his learning approach and the transferability of knowledge by having his system learn in a virtual robot simulation system and consequently transfer the acquired knowledge to a physical robot. The approach is influenced by findings from cognitive science. The book is suitable for researchers working in artificial intelligence, in particular knowledge representation, learning, spatial cognition, and robotics.

The unconventional computing is a niche for interdisciplinary science, cross-bred of computer science, physics, mathematics, chemistry, electronic engineering, biology, material science and nanotechnology. The aims of this book are to uncover and exploit principles and mechanisms of information processing in and functional properties of physical, chemical and living systems to develop efficient algorithms, design optimal architectures and manufacture working prototypes of future and emergent computing devices. This second volume presents experimental laboratory prototypes and applied computing implementations. Emergent molecular computing is presented by enzymatic logical gates and circuits, and DNA nano-devices. Reaction-diffusion chemical computing is exemplified by logical circuits in Belousov-Zhabotinsky medium and geometrical computation in precipitating chemical reactions. Logical circuits realised with solitons and impulses in polymer chains show advances in collision-based computing. Photo-chemical and memristive devices give us a glimpse on hot topics of a novel hardware. Practical computing is represented by algorithms of collective and immune-computing and nature-inspired optimisation. Living computing devices are implemented in real and simulated cells, regenerating organisms, plant roots and slime mould. The book is the encyclopedia, the first ever complete authoritative account, of the theoretical and experimental findings in the unconventional computing written by the world leaders in the field. All chapters are self-contains, no specialist background is required to appreciate ideas, findings, constructs and designs presented. This treatise in unconventional computing appeals to readers from all walks of life, from high-school pupils to university professors, from mathematicians, computers scientists and engineers to chemists and biologists.

The aim of this handbook is to create, for the first time, a systematic account of the field of spatial logic. The book comprises a general introduction, followed by fourteen chapters by invited authors. Each chapter provides a self-contained overview of its topic, describing the principal results obtained to date, explaining the methods used to obtain them, and listing the most important open problems. Jointly, these contributions constitute a comprehensive survey of this rapidly expanding subject.