Intelligent Systems involve a large class of systems which posses human-like capabilities such as learning, observation, perception, interpretation, reasoning under uncertainty, planning in known and unknown environments, decision making, and control action. The field of intelligent systems is actually a new interdisciplinary field which is the outcome of the interaction, cooperation and synergetic merging of classical fields such as system theory, control theory, artificial intelligence, information theory, operational research, soft computing, communications, linguistic theory, and others. Integrated intelligent decision and control systems involve three primary hierarchical levels, namely organization, coordination and execution levels. As we proceed from the be performed organization to the execution level, the precision about the jobs to increases and accordingly the intelligence required for these jobs decreases. This is in compliance with the principle of increasing precision with decreasing intelligence (IPOI) known from the management field and theoretically established by Saridis using information theory concepts. This book is concerned with intelligent systems and techniques and gives emphasis on the computational and processing issues. Control issues are not included here. The contributions of the book are presented in four parts as follows.

Preface. Contributors. Editorial. Part I: Computer-Aided Intelligent System and Tools. 1. Sources of Efficiency in Planning: A Survey; A. Tsois, S.G. Tzafestas. 2. An Interactive Geometric Constraint Solver; I. Fudos. 3. An Intelligent Agent Framework in VRML Worlds; T. Panayiotopoulos, et al. 4. Determining the Visual Interpretation of Actions in Interactive Stories; N.M. Sgouros, S. Sotirchos. 5. An Attribute Grammar Driven High-Level Synthesis Paradigm for Control Applications; G.E. Economakos, G.K. Papakonstantinou. 6. A Case Study in Specifying the Denotational Semantics of C; N.S. Papaspyrou. 7. A Multi-Agent Model for Content-Based Electronic Document Filtering; N.S. Papaspyrou, et al. 8. An Array Architecture for Syntactic Pattern Recognition; A. Koulouris, et al. 9. A Smart Load Balance Scheme for an Automatic Arbitrage Detection System; C.P. Voliotis, et al. 10. Intelligent Guidance in Virtual University; T. Panayiotopoulos, et al. Part II: Information Extraction from Texts, Natural Language Interfaces and Intelligent Retrieval Systems. 11. Question Answering and Information Extraction from Texts; J. Kontos, I. Malagardi. 12. Names Entity Recognition from Greek Texts: The GIE Projects; V. Karkaletsis, et al. 13. Using Functional Style Features to Enhance Information Extraction from Greek Texts; S.E. Michos, et al. 14. Lexical Knowledge Extraction from Technical Texts; I. Blank. 15. Information Extraction Techniques for Multilevel Text Matching; V. Di Tomaso, G. D'Angelo. 16. Parallel Information Extraction Systems for Multilingual Information Access; L. Dini. 17. Using Information Extraction for Knowledge Entering; F. Vichot, et al. 18. Eliciting Terminological Knowledge for Information Extraction Applications; B. Georgantopoulos, S. Piperidis. 19. Natural Language Interface to an Agent; J. Kontos, et al. 20. Using Forward Temporal Planning for the Production of Interactive Tutoring Dialogues; T. Panayiotopoulis, et al. 21. Content-Based Audio Retrieval Using a Generalized Algorithm; P. Piamsa-Nga, et al. 22. Intelligent Retrieval of Temporal and Periodic Data; L. Baxevanaki, et al. Part III: Image Processing and Video-Based Systems. 23. A Java-Based Image Processing System; P. Androutsos, et al. 24. Wavelet Image Compression: A Comparative Study; K. Friesen, et al. 25. Effective Image Expansion Using Subband Filterbanks; V. Alexopoulos, et al. 26. Color Image Segmentation for Multimedia Applications; N. Ikonomakis, et al. 27. Transformations Between Pictures from 2D to 3D; M. Sigmund, P. Novotny. 28. A Multicamera Active 3D Reconstruction Approach; T. Lilas, S. Kollias. 29. Video Object Segmentation Using the EM Algorithm; N.D. Doulamis, et al. 30. Estimation of 3D Motion and Structure of Human Faces; Y. Xirouhakis, et al. 31. Face Recognition Based on Multiple Representations: Splitting the Error Space; M. Leonidou, et al. 32. An Efficient Algorithm for Rendering Parametric Curves; S.G. Tzafestas, J. Pantazopoulos. 33. Gesture Recognition: The Gesture Segmentation Problem; M.K. Viblis, K.J. Kyriakopoulos. 34. A Color Coordinate Normalizer Chip; I. Andreadis. Part IV: Applications. 35. Stochastic Modeling in GPS Estimation Algorithms; M. Pachter, S. Nardi. 36. Digital Image Processing for Weathering Analysis and Planning of Conservation Interventions on Historic Structures and Complexes; A. Moropoulou, et al. 37. A Thinning-Based Method for Extracting Peri-Urban Road Network from Panchromatic Images; V. Karathanassi, et al. 38. Integration of Multiple Software Tools for the Design and Analysis of Structures; J.R. Garcia-Lazaro, J.F. Bienvenido. 39. Application of Distributed Techniques in a Set of Tools to Climatic Sensor Signal Validation and Data Analysis: DAMOCIA-VAL and DAMOCIA-EXP; F. Rodriguez, et al. 40. Current Techniques in Distributed Sensor Networks and Connection with AI and GIS: An Overview; S.G. Tzafestas, L.N. Laliotis. ...