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This collection of selected papers from the Fourth International Conference on Adaptive Computing in Design and Manufacture (ACDM0) represents a cross-section of the state-of-the art relating to the integration of advanced stochastic search, exploration and optimisation techniques with complex problem areas relating to various aspects of design and manufacturing processes. The Conference, held in the Sherwell Conference Centre at the University of Plymouth, Devon, UK in April, 2000, is a well-established biennial event supported by several UK Engineering Institutions and recognised by the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation as a mainstream event. The conference continues to attract an international audience of leading researchers and practitioners in the field. Aerospace, mechanical, thermal and structural design are among the subjects treated. In terms of manufacturing processes, cell formation, facility design, system control and robotics are addressed. In most cases, results from their application to or integration with real-world industrial problems are very much in evidence and conclusions relating to the overall utility of the various techniques across a diverse spectrum of problem areas are available. Evolutionary computing research and its application provides the mainstay in the great majority of papers. In the tradition of the ACDM series, papers utilising neural computing technologies and related computational intelligence techniques within the design/manufacture environments have also been included. The collection further illustrates the increasing uptake of these technologies in terms of academic research, academic and industrial collaboration and industrial practice. It is apparent that application strategies are becoming increasingly sophisticated as the powerful data processing capabilities of the technologies become more apparent and their increasing potential leads to integration with more complex problem areas so the book will be of particular interest to both design and computer science research communities in addition to those industrial organisations that are either already including these technologies in day-to-day working practice or that wish to familiarise themselves with the potential utility of their application further.
