The concept of intelligent systems (IS) remains a fluid subject and perhaps that is its strength. However, much work in the area can be characterized fairly as an integration on different levels of several technology directions-intelligent control, artificial intelligence, decision support, soft computing, knowledge discovery and data mining, data fusion, knowledge engineering, machine learning, fuzzy reasoning, neural networks, intelligent measurement, and human-machine interaction (a list that is not intended to be comprehensive)-with challenging applications to complex systems.
Various specialized symposia are held directed to the narrow area of IS. The meetings with a wider subject are relatively rare.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) First International Symposium on "Intelligent Systems" was held in Varna, Bulgaria from September 10 to September 12, 2002. The aim of the symposium was to present opportunities for scientists and engineers from the region, Europe, and the rest of the world; to present their new research achievements and applications; and to discuss the current status and the future trends in the broad area of ISs. The motivation of the symposium was many-sided.
Because the IEEE IS'02 Symposium covers a wide range of IS methods and applications, we decided to describe the contemporary achievements in the field by discussion of the symposium articles. A representative part of the symposium contributions are published in this issue of the Journal.
Six articles are selected from the symposium for the present specialized magazine edition of this Journal.
The invited paper "High-Confidence Control: Ensuring Reliability in High-Performance Real-Time Systems," by P. Binns, D. Cofer, V. Ha, and T. Samad (USA), presents new results directed at the solution of two particular problemsdevelopment of a new dynamic resource management technology and statistical