The book includes soft computing implementations of intelligent systems models. The recent popularity of fuzzy systems, neural networks and evolutionary computation, considered as related in AI, are now widely used to build intelligent systems. Professor Lotfi A. Zadeh has suggested the term "Soft Computing" for all new techniques working in these new areas of AI. Soft Computing techniques are tolerant to imprecision, uncertainty and partial truth. Due to the large variety and complexity of the domain, the constituting methods of Soft Computing are not competing for a comprehensive ultimate solution. Instead they are complementing each other, for dedicated solutions adapted to each specific problem. Hundreds of concrete applications are already available in many domains. Model based approaches offer a very challenging way to integrate a priori knowledge into procedures. Due to their flexibility, robustness, and easy interpretability, the soft computing applications will continue to have an exceptional role in our technologies.
