Welcome to this special issue of the Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics (JACIII). I am pleased to introduce 41 selected papers presented at the 3^rd International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems (SCIS) and the 7th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligent Systems (ISIS) held on September 17-21, 2008, at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan.

This conference featured 401 original papers in presentations attended by some 500 participants.

SCIS & ISIS is a biennial international joint conference in the field of soft computing and intelligent systems, including branches of research ranging from fuzzy systems, neural networks, and evolutionary computation to multiagent systems, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

This current issue presents 20 papers covering most of the conference topics including fuzzy theory, self-organizing maps, robotics, computer vision, and optimization algorithms.

I would like to thank the authors and reviewers and SCIS & ISIS 2008 for making this special issue possible. I am also grateful to Prof. Toshio Fukuda, Nagoya University, and Prof. Kaoru Hirota, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the editors-in-chief, and the SCIS & ISIS 2008 conference staff for inviting me to guest-edit this Journal.