This second special issue from the Joint 5th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems and the 11th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligent Systems (SCIS & ISIS) 2010 presents 11 progressive papers covering topics from Fuzzy c-Means, clustering, evolutionary algorithms, and self-organizing maps to optimization, spiral phenomena, matroids, multirobot systems, and reinforcement learning. This wide range of research interests reflects current trends in the SCIS & ISIS conference series. As such, they demonstrate how near-future research interests are gradually moving toward exciting new directions.

We thank the authors and reviewers for taking time out from their busy schedules to make this publication possible. We are especially grateful to Prof. Toshio Fukuda of Nagoya University and to Prof. Kaoru Hirota of the Tokyo Institute of Technology for giving us the opportunity to guest-edit JACIII. Our special thanks go to Ms. Reiko Ohta of Fuji Technology Press Ltd. for her ongoing support in publication.