The JACIII was first published in 1997, and 2017 marks its 20^th anniversary. During the last two decades, the research fields in computational intelligence have rapidly evolved owing to the spread of the Internet, performance improvement of computers, and accumulation of scientific knowledge. To celebrate this 20^th anniversary, we have selected 6 important research areas from the JACIII scope, and invited outstanding researchers from each of these areas to contribute papers about the progress and major topics in those areas during the past 20 years. Submitted paper went through a peer-review process by distinguished professors to further improve the quality. The research areas selected were computational intelligence, fuzzy intelligence, intelligent robots, artificial intelligence and web intelligence, data mining, and smart grids. Each of those paper covers broad topics appeared in the research areas, from which readers could grasp what happened during the past 20 years. We also hope readers could find some hints about future directions of their own researches towards the next 20 years.

Invited Paper 1: Computational Intelligence: Retrospection and Future

Author: Witold Pedrycz (University of Alberta, Canada)

Invited Paper 2: Fuzzy Inference: Its Past and Prospects

Authors: Kiyohiko Uehara (Ibaraki University, Japan) and Kaoru Hirota (Beijing Institute of Technology, China)

Invited Paper 3: Relationship Between Human and Robot in Nonverbal Communication

Authors: Yukiko Nakagawa and Noriaki Nakagawa (RT Corporation, Japan)

Invited Paper 4: Web Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence

Author: Yasufumi Takama (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan)

Invited Paper 5: A Review of Data Mining Techniques and Applications

Authors: Ratchakoon Pruengkarn, Kok Wai Wong, and Chun Che Fung (Murdoch University, Australia)

Invited Paper 6: Development and Current State of Smart Grids: A Review

Author: Ken Nagasaka (Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan)