Intelligent Environments (IEs) combine physical spaces with ICT and pervasive technology to increase the users’ awareness of their surroundings, empower them to carry out their tasks, enrich their experience, and enhance their ability to manage such environments. IEs’ growing community, from academia to practitioners, is working on bringing IEs to life. Their work is driven by innovative ideas and technological progress, which makes it possible to place an increasing number of sensors and computing devices in IE in an affordable and energy-efficient manner.

The 17th International Conference on Intelligent Environments is taking place in the challenging times of COVID-19. ICT researchers and engineers have mostly been fortunate in that the pandemic has not significantly impacted their ability to work. Due to social distancing measures, a lot of human activity has moved online and to virtual environments, which is actually stimulating for ICT development. On one hand, this makes conferences such as ours more accessible as it lowers the cost and removes the need to travel. On the other hand, it diminishes the experience. An important aspect of conferences is engaging in informal discussions and sharing ideas in corridors, over a coffee or meal. Despite some efforts, this does not (yet) translate well to virtual environments. This was particularly felt by the workshops at this year’s conference, which are unfortunately fewer than in previous years. Nevertheless, we are pleased to include the proceedings of the following workshops, which emphasize multi-disciplinary and transversal aspects of IEs, as well as cutting-edge topics:

• 10th International Workshop on the Reliability of Intelligent Environments (WoRIE’21)

• 3rd International Workshop on Intelligent Environments and Buildings (IEB’21)

• 1st International Workshop on Self- Learning in Intelligent Environments (SeLIE ’21)

• 1st International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Emerging Topics (ALLEGET ’21)

The proceedings contain contributions reflecting the latest research development in IEs and related areas, focusing on pushing the boundaries of the current state of the art and contributing to an establishment of IEs in the real world. We would like to thank all the contributing authors, as well as the members of the organizing committees and program committees of the workshops for their highly valuable work, which contributed to the success of the Intelligent Environments 2021 event. We are grateful to our technical sponsors, the IEEE Systems Man & Cybernetics Society, IOS Press and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

The Editors

April 2021