Artificial Intelligence is a highly creative field. Numerous research areas in Computer Science that originated over the past fifty years within AI laboratories and were discussed in AI conferences are now completely independent and mature research domains whose young practitioners may not even be acquainted with the AI affiliation. It is fortunate to see that while disseminating and spreading out, the AI field per se remains very active.

This is particularly the case in Europe. The Ecai series of conferences keeps growing. This 18th edition received more submissions than the previous ones. About 680 papers and posters were registered at ECAI 2008 conference system, out of which 518 papers and 43 posters were actually reviewed. The program committee decided to accept

• 121 full papers, an acceptance rate of 23%, and

• 97 posters.

Several submitted full papers have been accepted as posters. All posters, presented in these Proceedings as short papers, will have formal presentation slots in the technical sessions of the main program of the conference, as well as poster presentations within a specific session.

The 561 reviewed submissions were originated from 51 different countries, out of which 35 countries are represented in the final program. The following table shows the number of submitted and accepted papers or posters per country, based on the contact author affiliation.

Country Sub. Acc.

Australia 26 12

Austria 12 6

Belgium 4 3

Brazil 13 1

Bulgaria 1 1

Canada 13 6

Chile 1

China 6 3

Cyprus 1 1

Czech Republic 6 1

Denmark 1 1

Egypt 1

Finland 4 3

France 116 42

Germany 49 20

Greece 34 14

Hungary 1

India 2

Iran 5 1

Ireland 13 6

Israel 6 2

Italy 43 19

Japan 9 4

Korea 2

Luxembourg 4 2

Malaysia 2 1

Malta 1 1

Mexico 1

Morocco 1 1

Netherlands 23 11

New Zealand 1

Norway 2 1

Pakistan 1

Poland 4

Portugal 17 6

Romania 4 1

Russia 4

Saudi Arabia 1

Singapore 1

Slovenia 4 3

South Africa 2

Spain 35 12

Sweden 9 5

Switzerland 2

Taiwan 2 1

Thailand 1

Tunisia 5 1

Turkey 3 1

United Kingdom 46 19

United States 15 6

Venezuela 1

The distribution of the 561 submitted and the 218 accepted paper or posters over reviewing areas (based on the first keyword chosen by the authors) is given below. With respect to previous ECAI conferences, one may notice a relative growth of the Machine Learning and Cognitive Modeling & Interaction areas. The rest of the distribution remains about stable, with marginal fluctuations given that areas are overlapping and their frontiers are not sharp.

ECAI 2008 Conference Areas Papers Submitted Papers Accepted

KR&R 102 42

Machine Learning 102 32

Distributed & Multi-agents Systems 92 37

Cognitive Modeling & Interaction 57 17

Constraints and search 51 20

Model-based Reasoning and Diagnosis 51 26

NLP 47 18

Planning and scheduling 33 13

Perception, Sensing and Cognitive Robotics 14 6

Uncertainty in AI 12 7

561 218

The Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (PAIS), ECAI associated subconference, has also been very successful this year by the number and quality of submitted papers. Its program committee received 35 submissions in total and accepted 11 full papers, and 4 additional papers with short presentations.

In conclusion, we are very happy to introduce you to the Proceedings of this 18th edition of ECAI, a conference that is growing and maintaining a high standard of quality. The success of this edition is due to the contribution and support of many colleagues. We would like to gratefully thank all those who helped organizing ECAI 2008 into a tremendous success. Area chairs, PAIS, workshop chairs and workshop organizers as well as the Systems Demonstration Chair were the key actors of this success. They managed timely and efficiently a heavy workload. Much thanks in particular to Felix Ingrand, who acted not only area chair but also as a program co-chair through the overall process. PC members provided high quality reviews and contributed to detailed discussions of several papers before reaching a decision. Finally, to all the persons involved in the local organization of the conference, many thanks for a tremendous amount of excellent work and much appreciated help.

June 2008

Malik Ghallab, Constantine Spyropoulos, Nikos Fakotakis, Nikos Avouris