On behalf of the IEEE/ASME AIM'99 Organizing Committee, I would like to thank the plenary speakers, panelists, presenting authors, exhibitors, and all the participants for contributing to the success of the 1999 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM '99). I sincerely hope that those who attended the conference enjoyed their stay in Atlanta.  We have achieved the purpose of this biennial conference, following in the footsteps of the first one in Tokyo, Japan, in 1997, to promote activities in various areas of mechatronics by providing a forum for exchange of ideas, presentation of technical achievements, and discussion of future directions. We had 235 participants in the AIM'99, roughly one-third from Asia, one-quarter from Europe, and the remaining 42% from North America.  This year, a total of 24 countries have submitted papers with overall breakdown of about 1/3 for each of the three greater geographic regions (America, Asia and Europe). The technical program included the presentation of 171 papers and 6 videos, organized into 36 sessions. The conference proceedings are provided in both the traditional printed version and a CD-ROM disk. In addition, abstracts of the papers had been made available on the web prior to the meeting. The conference began on Sunday, September 19 with a half-day tutorial in the afternoon. Technical sessions were held in four parallel tracks from Monday to Wednesday. After the opening ceremony on Monday, two plenary lectures were delivered by Peter Will and Kazuo Tanie, respectively; these were followed by a panel. The day ended with a welcome reception in the evening. The highlights of Tuesday were the plenary lecture by Paolo Dario, the luncheon keynote speech by Toshio Fukuda, as well as the research laboratory tour at Georgia Tech and the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT). At night, the banquet was aboard the Henry W. Grady Riverboat cruising the beautiful natural surroundings of Georgia's Stone Mountain Park, a masterpiece of nature that amazes millions of guests from around the world. Wednesday began with a round table and ended with a farewell party in the evening. On Thursday, conference attendees visited local industries on two tours; one to Lucent Technologies and Ford and the other to Lockheed Martin and General Motors. All the papers had been accepted after a full-length paper peer review process conducted by the International Program Committee. The high technical quality of the submitted papers, combined with the conscientious efforts of the program committee members and the reviewers, enabled us to establish the record of the conference. The review was aided by the requirement that the papers be submitted in final format, thereby allowing a fair evaluation of uniform length. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous effort invested in the review process by the Program Co-Chairs, the Members of the International Program Committee, and anonymous Reviewers. In particular, I would like to thank the following individuals for exceptional contributions to this conference.  To Bruno Siciliano (General Co-chair) for his dedicated involvement and timely responses to virtually every aspect of the technical program. To Hideki Hashimoto, Manfred Hiller, Ronald Arkin and Tom Kurfess (Program Co-chairs) for promoting the conference in their respective regions and timely handling of the review process.  Due to their efforts, the contributions from Asia have continued to be very strong and the participation from North America and Europe have increased tremendously. To T. J. Tarn for making the initial publication arrangements with the IEEE and Omnipress. To Jadran Lenarcic, Shigeru Okuma, and William Hamel for their assistance in finalizing the advance technical program. To Tom Collins for sacrificing his personal vacation to take care of all the Audio/Visual and computer equipment.  To Harry Garner for organizing the student volunteers as session aides and tour guides and giving a lecture for my Machine Vision course during the Conference Luncheon.  Their daily attendance contributed significantly to the smooth operation of the conference. To Wayne Daley and his secretary, Nicole Oaks, for organizing the industrial tours.  To Melriv Hollis of Ford Motor Company, Pat Frey of General Motors Inc., Cecil Schneider and Shirley Chapman of Lockheed Martin,  Patsy Cantrell and Eudora Martin of Lucent Technologies for the kind arrangements and professional services during the respective industrial tours.  To Gail Payne and Diane Murray for coordinating the uncountable events and her staff for their professional work behind the scene: Greg Stenzoski and Shamika Hill for the printing and the beautiful art work for the AIM'99 conference and Laura Jackson for professional handling of the registration. To Steve Thomas for his never complaints, timely responses to my many "urgent" requests, and the impressive web pages. To Ward Winer, Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, for providing the space for the AIM'99 website and the secretary support. Finally, I wish to thank the local volunteers who made things run smoothly. Of course, we must remember and thank all the authors of the papers. Without their contributions, there would be no conference at all. Before I say good bye, I would like to encourage you to keep up with your good work and share with us your research contributions during the next conference in Como, Italy.  Let's wish Bruno, the General Chair for AIM'01, all of the best for the next successful AIM conference. 2001 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM'01)   8–11 July 2001   Como, Italy email: info@www.AIM01.unina.it   http://www.AIM01.unina.it Kok-Meng Lee AIM'99 General Chair Memories of the past:  AIM'97 AIM'99 and its conference photos: Opening (AIM'99 General Chair: Kok-Meng Lee ) and the audience  Plenary Lecture 1: Peter Will, USC/Information Sciences Institute, California, USA  Plenary Lecture 2: Kazuo Tanie, Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, AIST-MITI, Tokyo, Japan  Plenary Lecture 3: Paolo Dario, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy  Luncheon Keynote: Toshio Fukuda, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan  Panel on Research Funding Opportunities on Mechatronics, Organized by J. Xiao, National Science Foundation, USA  Panelist: Rajinder Khosla, National Science Foundation, USA  Panelist: Mark Swinson, DARPA, USA  Round Table on Infrastructure for Mechatronics Education  Audience's response at theRound Table  Exhibitor: Quansar Consulting  Exhibitor: DVT  Among the audience, T. J. Tarn, Bruno and Kok-Meng Expressing thanks to Dr. Xiao for organizing the panel  Diane Murray, AIM'99 Program Coordinator, at the registration desk  At the Stone Mountain  At the Banquet