This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Vision Systems, ICVS 2011, held in Sophia Antipolis, France, in September 2009. The 22 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on vision systems, control of perception, performance evaluation, activity recognition, and knowledge directed vision.

Human and animal vision systems have been driven by the pressures of evolution to become capable of perceiving and reacting to their environments as close to instantaneously as possible. Casting such a goal of reactive vision into the framework of existing technology necessitates an artificial system capable of operating continuously, selecting and integrating information from an environment within stringent time delays. The YAP (Vision As Process) project embarked upon the study and development of techniques with this aim in mind. Since its conception in 1989, the project has successfully moved into its second phase, YAP II, using the integrated system developed in its predecessor as a basis. During the first phase of the work the "vision as a process paradigm" was realised through the construction of flexible stereo heads and controllable stereo mounts integrated in a skeleton system (SA V A) demonstrating continuous real-time operation. It is the work of this fundamental period in the V AP story that this book aptly documents. Through its achievements, the consortium has contributed to building a strong scientific base for the future development of continuously operating machine vision systems, and has always underlined the importance of not just solving problems of purely theoretical interest but of tackling real-world scenarios. Indeed the project members should now be well poised to contribute (and take advantage of) industrial applications such as navigation and process control, and already the commercialisation of controllable heads is underway.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Second European Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Conference. The conference took place in Erlangen and Nurnberg, November 19-22, 2008. The concept of ambient intelligence (AmI) was introduced in the late 1990s as a novel paradigm for electronic environments for the years 2010-2020. It builds on the early visions of Weiser describing a novel mobile computing infrastr- ture integrated into the networked environment of people. According to early defi- tions, AmI refers to smart electronic surroundings that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. The added value for the multi-dimensional society we are living in lies in the fact that the large-scale integration of microelectronics into the environment enables people and objects to interact with this environment in a se- less, trustworthy, and natural manner. Obviously, AmI solutions deliver a new quality of communication and information exchange, they help people to fulfill their professional tasks with increasing efficiency, enable the older generation to stay much longer in the privacy of their own homes and the younger one to lead a healthy and responsible life. Smart mobile devices navigate in private apartments as well as in complex public or industrial environments in order to support people with a broad variety of services."

This volume of the LNCS is the formal proceedings of the 2nd European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence, EUSAI 2004. This event was held on November 8 10, 2004 at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. EUSAI 2004 followed a successful first event in 2003, organized by Philips Research. This turned out to be a timely initiative that created a forum for bringing together European researchers, working on different disciplines all contributing towards the human-centric technological vision of ambient intelligence. Compared to conferences working on similar and overlapping fields, the first EUSAI was characterized by a strong industrial focus reflected in the program committee and the content of the program. As program chairs of EUSAI 2004 we tried to preserve the character for this event and its combined focus on the four major thematic areas: ubiquitous computing, context awareness, intelligence, and natural interaction. Further, we tried to make EUSAI 2004 grow into a full-fledged double-track conference, with surrounding events like tutorials and specialized workshops, a poster and demonstration exhibition and a student design competition. The conference program included three invited keynotes, Ted Selker from MIT, Tom Rodden from the University of Nottingham and Tom Erickson from IBM."

Human and animal vision systems have been driven by the pressures of evolution to become capable of perceiving and reacting to their environments as close to instantaneously as possible. Casting such a goal of reactive vision into the framework of existing technology necessitates an artificial system capable of operating continuously, selecting and integrating information from an environment within stringent time delays. The YAP (Vision As Process) project embarked upon the study and development of techniques with this aim in mind. Since its conception in 1989, the project has successfully moved into its second phase, YAP II, using the integrated system developed in its predecessor as a basis. During the first phase of the work the "vision as a process paradigm" was realised through the construction of flexible stereo heads and controllable stereo mounts integrated in a skeleton system (SA V A) demonstrating continuous real-time operation. It is the work of this fundamental period in the V AP story that this book aptly documents. Through its achievements, the consortium has contributed to building a strong scientific base for the future development of continuously operating machine vision systems, and has always underlined the importance of not just solving problems of purely theoretical interest but of tackling real-world scenarios. Indeed the project members should now be well poised to contribute (and take advantage of) industrial applications such as navigation and process control, and already the commercialisation of controllable heads is underway.