Preface

    As one of our recent actions to promote an international contribution of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), we have decided to publish the English translated version of our SICE transaction.
    This is the cerebrated first English volume of our transaction, and we are very proud that all the selected papers in this volume are received the SICE best paper award of these years from 1981-2000.
    As you may know, our society was founded in 1961, and celebrated the 40th year anniversary of foundation last October.
    Our society is one of well-established societies in Japan, and our major field is dedicated to the development of measurement, control, systems and information science and technology.
    However, our past 40 years activities were mainly dedicated to domestic contribution in our fields.
    On this occasion of the 40th anniversary of our society foundation, we have made a little bit change of a policy to make our activities be more international.
    That is to say, we have made two decisions: one is to publish the English version of the selected papers from our transaction. The other is to publish the proceedings of our annual conference in English in order to promote the participation of foreign experts in the related fields of our society at our annual conference.
    We hope that the English version of our transaction would contribute to provide the SICE with a world-wide recognition in the field of measurement, control, systems and information science and technology.
    We also wish that the translated version of our transaction makes SICE be registered in the citation index and that it serves to encourage every SICE member to make his or her contribution be with world-wide recognition.
    Finally, we do hope that it makes every SICE member enjoy the pleasure of joining the SICE with great satisfaction.

Toshiro Ono
President of SICE
2001-2002