The VIII National Symposium on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis was held in Bilbao, from the 12th to the 14th of May, 1999. The aim of the symposium was to provide a forum for presenting, discussing and exposing novel research and technology results in areas related to all aspects of pattern recognition and applications. All the papers published in this book have been reviewed by three members of the Program Committee. A total of 26 papers were finally selected from the 119 presented at the symposium. They are organized into categories reflecting the present areas of interest in Spain:...

First of all, we want to congratulate two new research communities from M- ico and Brazil that have recently joined the Iberoamerican community and the International Association for Pattern Recognition. We believe that the series of congresses that started as the "Taller Iberoamericano de Reconocimiento de Patrones (TIARP)," and later became the "Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition (CIARP)," has contributed to these groupconsolidatione?orts. We hope that in the near future all the Iberoamerican countries will have their own groups and associations to promote our areas of interest;...

This monograph covers theoretical aspects of simultaneous localization and map building for mobile robots. These include estimation stability, nonlinear models for the propagation of uncertainties, temporal landmark compatibility, as well as issues pertaining the coupling of control and SLAM. One of the most relevant topics covered in this monograph is the theoretical formalism of partial observability in SLAM.