Coping with spatial expressions in a plausible manner is a crucial problem in a number of research fields, specifically cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and linguistics. This volume contains a set of theoretical analyses as well as accounts of applications which deal with the problems of representing and processing spatial expressions. These include dialogue understanding using mental images; interfaces to CAD and multi-media systems, such as natural language querying of photographic databases; speech-driven design and assembly; machine translation systems; spatial queries for Geographic Information Systems; and systems which generate spatial descriptions on the basis of maps, cognitive maps, or other spatial representations, such as intelligent vehicle navigation systems. Though there have been many different approaches to the representation and processing of spatial expressions, most existing computational characterizations have so far been restricted to particularly narrow problem domains, usually specific spatial contexts determined by overall system goals. To date, artificial intelligence research in this field has rarely taken advantage of language and spatial cognition studies carried out by the cognitive science community. One of the fundamental aims of this book is to bring together research from both disciplines in the belief that artificial intelligence has much to gain from an appreciation of cognitive theories.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Advances in Visual Informatics, IVIC 2013, held in Selangor, Malaysia, in November 2013. The four keynotes and 69 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers focus on four tracks: computer visions and engineering; computer graphics and simulation; virtual and augmented reality; and visualization and social computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Pervasive 2012, held in Newcastle, UK, in June 2012. The 28 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 138 submissions. The contributions are grouped into the following topical sections: activity capturing; urban mobility and computing; home and energy; HCI; development tools and devices; indoor location and positioning; social computing and games; privacy; public displays and services.

The two-volume set LNCS 7066 and LNCS 7067 constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Visual Informatics Conference, IVIC 2011, held in Selangor, Malaysia, during November 9-11, 2011. The 71 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in these proceedings. They are organized in topical sections named computer vision and simulation; virtual image processing and engineering; visual computing; and visualisation and social computing. In addition the first volume contains two keynote speeches in full paper length, and one keynote abstract.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2011, held in Bremen, Germany, in July 2011. The 10 revised full papers presented together with 12 short papers and 4 systems demonstrations were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions covering a wide range of topics including view and camera control; three-dimensional modeling; visual information encoding; video projection; information visualization; interaction techniques; visual communication; and graphics and audio.

Smartgraphicsarepervasivein ourlives nowadays.Thewaysartistsand desi- ersproduceimagesthate?ectivelysupporthumancognitionandcommunication are continuously changing and evolving as they incorporate novel methods p- vided by the advances in science and technology. As a counterpart, the radically new visions in most art forms have stimulated scientists to breath-taking levels of achievement. This symbiotic relationship between art and science (and technology) is one of the foundations of the technological culture of contemporary society and is especiallyevidentinthecreationofsmartgraphics.Suchaprocessrestsonadeep understanding of the fundamentals of perception and cognition as they relate to interaction and communication technologies, together with arti?cial intelligence andcomputergraphicstechniques, toautomatereasoningandenhancecognition. The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2009 was held from May 28-30 in Salamanca, Spain. With this edition we celebrated our tenth anniv- sary: a successful series of inspiring and exciting meetings originating in 2000 as an American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence Spring Symposium. This year we proposed a speci?c emphasis on visual analytics as well as all kinds of transversalresearchthat harnesses the power of humans and technol- icalartifacts in order to convey, understandanddeal with complex scienti?c and socialprocesses.Wewereluckyto haveDanielKeim andJ] ornKohlhammer, two internationally renowned experts on this area of research, as invited speakers

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2007, held in Kyoto, Japan in June 2007 jointly with the Visual Computing / Graphics and CAD symposium, which takes place in Osaka, Japan. It covers interaction, lifelike characters and affective computing, knowledge-based graphics generation and interaction, and visualization and graphics algorithms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2006, held in Marina Del Rey, CA, USA, in August 2006.

The 24 revised full papers and 11 revised short papers presented together with 3 invited talks and the abstracts of 19 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 73 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on social impact of IVAs, IVAs recognizing human behavior, human interpretation of IVA behavior, embodied conversational agents, characteristics of nonverbal behavior, behavior representation languages, generation of nonverbal behavior with speech, IVAs in serious games, cognition and emotion, and applications of IVAs.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2006, held in Vancouver, Canada, July 2006. The book presents 19 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent text processing, perceptive systems, smart visualization, visual features, sketching and graphical abstraction, intelligent image and film composing, as well as smart interaction.

The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton at the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester in 1999. Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001 and Irsee, Germany in 2003 and attracted participants from both sides of the Atlantic as well as Asia. th This volume contains the proceedings of the 5 International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2005, held on Kos Island, Greece, September 12-14, 2005, which highlighted once again the importance and vigor of the research field. A half-day workshop under the title "Socially Competent IVA's: We are not alone in this (virtual) world!" also took place as part of this event. IVA 2005 received 69 submissions from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. The papers published here are the 26 full papers and 14 short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of the 15 posters and the descriptions of the featured invited talks by Prof. Justine Cassell, of Northwestern University and Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, of the University of Hertfordshire. We would like to thank a number of people that have contributed to the success of this conference. First of all, we thank the authors for their high-quality work and their willingness to share their ideas.

TheInternationalSymposiumonSmartGraphics2005washeldfromAugust22- 24, 2005 in the cloister Frauenwort ] h on the island of Frauenchiemsee, Germany. It was the sixth event in a series which originally started in 2000 as a AAAI Spring Symposium. Inresponsetotheoverwhelmingsuccessofthe2000symposium, itsorganizers decided to turn it into a self-contained event. With the support of IBM, the ?rst two International Symposia on Smart Graphics were held at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY in 2001 and 2002. The 2003 symposium moved to the European Media Lab in Heidelberg to underline the international character of the Smart Graphics enterprise and its community. The core idea behind these symposia is to bring together researchers and practitioners fromthe ?eld ofcomputer graphics, arti?cialintelligence, cognitive science, graphic design and the ?ne arts. Each of these disciplines contributes to what we mean by the term "Smart Graphics" the intelligent process of creating e?ective, expressive and esthetic graphical presentation. Many Smart Graphics symposiaemphasizea particularaspectofthe?eldin thecallfor papers.In2005 our focus was on "Visual Analytics"- the art and science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces."

The International Symposium on Smart Graphics 2004 was held on May 23-25, 2004 in Ban?, Canada. It was the ?fth event in a series which originally started in 2000 as a AAAI Spring Symposium. In response to the overwhelming success of the 2000 symposium, its organizers decided to turn it into a self-contained event in 2001. With the support of IBM, the ?rst two InternationalSymposia on Smart Graphics were held at the T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY in 2001 and 2002. The 2003 symposium moved to the European Media Lab in Heidelberg to underline the international character of the Smart Graphics enterprise and its community. The 2004 symposium particularly emphasized the contribution of arts and design to the interdisciplinary ?eld of Smart Graphics andwasthereforeheldattheBan?CentreinAlberta, Canada, aninternationally recognized center of creative excellence. The core idea behind these symposia is to bring together researchers and practitioners from the ?eld of computer graphics, arti?cial intelligence, cog- tive psychology and the ?ne arts. Each of these disciplines contributes to what we mean by the term "Smart Graphics" the intelligent process of creating - pressive and esthetic graphical presentations. While artists and designers have been creatingcommunicativegraphicsfor centuries, arti?cialintelligencefocuses on automating this process by means of the computer. While computer graphics providesthetoolsforcreatinggraphicalpresentationsinthe?rstplace, cognitive sciences contribute the rules and models of perception necessary for the design of e?ective graphics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Smart Graphics, SG 2003, held in Heidelberg, Germany in July 2003. The 19 revised full papers and 7 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation. The papers address smart graphics issues from the points of view of computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and fine art. The papers are organized in topical sections on graphical interaction, visualization techniques, virtual characters, and camera planning.

The recent rise of multimedia technology has turned visual communication into an everyday reality and made it necessary to achieve a better understanding of the role of diagrams and sketches in communication and in creative thought and problem-solving.Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning is a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary overview of this area, covering relevant research in computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and psychology.Key topics include:- Cognitive aspects of diagrammatic information;- Formal methods for computing with diagrams;- Applications of advanced diagrammatic systems.This book is a state-of-the-art survey that will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and graphics and visualisation.

The two-volume set LNCS 7066 and LNCS 7067 constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Visual Informatics Conference, IVIC 2011, held in Selangor, Malaysia, during November 9-11, 2011. The 71 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in these proceedings. They are organized in topical sections named computer vision and simulation; virtual image processing and engineering; visual computing; and visualisation and social computing. In addition the first volume contains two keynote speeches in full paper length, and one keynote abstract.

Visual informatics is a field of interest not just among the information technology and computer science community, but also other related fields such as engineering, me- cal and health informatics and education starting in the early 1990s. Recently, the field is gaining more attention from researchers and industry. It has become a mul- disciplinary and trans-disciplinary field related to research areas such as computer vision, visualization, information visualization, real-time image processing, medical image processing, image information retrieval, virtual reality, augmented reality, - pressive visual mathematics, 3D graphics, multimedia-fusion, visual data mining, visual ontology, as well as services and visual culture. Various efforts has been - vested in different research, but operationally, many of these systems are not pro- nent in the mass market and thus knowledge and research on these phenomena within the mentioned areas need to be shared and disseminated. It is for this reason that the Visual Informatics Research Group from Universiti - bangsaan Malaysia (UKM) decided to spearhead this initiative to bring together experts in this very diversified but important research area so that more concerted efforts can be undertaken not just within the visual informatics community in Malaysia but from other parts of the world, namely, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and USA. This first International Visual Informatics Conference (IVIC 2009) was conducted collaboratively, by the visual informatics research community from the various public and private institutions of higher learning in Malaysia, and hosted by UKM.