About this Book

The Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (MICAI) is a biennial conference established to promote research in artificial intelligence (AI), and cooperation among Mexican researchers and their peers worldwide. MICAI is organized by the Mexican Society for Artificial Intelligence (SMIA), in colla- ration with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Mexican Society for Computer Science (SMCC). After two successful conferences, we are pleased to present the 3rd Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2004, which took place on April 26-30, 2004, in Mexico City, Mexico. This volume contains the papers included in the conference main program, which was complemented by tutorials and workshops, published in supplementary proceedings. The proceedings of past MICAI conferences, 2000 and 2002, were also published in Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series, volumes 1793 and 2313. The number of submissions to MICAI 2004 was significantly higher than those of previous conferences -- 254 papers from 19 different countries were submitted for consideration to MICAI 2004. The evaluation of this unexpectedly large number of papers was a challenge, both in terms of the quality of the papers and of the review workload of each PC member. After a thorough reviewing process, MICAI's Program Committee and Programs Chairs accepted 97 hi- quality papers. So the acceptance rate was 38.2%. CyberChair, a free Web-based paper submission and reviewing system, was used as an electronic support for the reviewing process. This book contains revised versions of the 94 papers presented at the conference. The volume is structured into 13 thematic fields according to the topics addressed by the papers, which are representative of the main current area of interest within the AI community.