The present book includes a set of selected papers from the 5th "International Conference on Informatics in Control Automation and Robotics" (ICINCO 2008), held in Funchal-Madeira, Portugal, 11-15 May 2008. The conference was organized in three simultaneous tracks: "Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization", "Robotics and Automation" and "Systems Modeling, Signal Processing and Control". The book is based on the same structure. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the application of informatics to Control, Automation and Robotics.
Informatics applications are pervasive in many areas of Control, Automation and Robotics, and this conference intends to emphasize this connection, therefore, most papers highlight applications of Information Technology (IT) in these areas and present ideas on how to solve problems using IT, both in R&D and industrial applications. A diversity of papers are included in the book, ranging from papers describing advanced prototypes, systems, tools and techniques to papers presenting surveys indicating future directions.