The Mexican International Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (MICAI) is a biennial conference established to promote research inarti?cial intelligence (AI), and cooperation among Mexican researchersand their peers worldwide. MICAI is organized by the Mexican Societyfor Arti?cial Intelligence (SMIA), in colla- ration with the AmericanAssociation for Arti?cial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Mexican Society for Computer Science (SMCC). After two successful conferences, we are pleased to present the 3rd Mexican InternationalConferenceonArti?cialIntelligence,MICAI2004,whichtookplace on April 26-30, 2004, in Mexico City, Mexico. This volume contains the papers included in the conferencemain program, which was complemented by tutorials and workshops, published in supplementary proceedings. The proceedings of pastMICAIconferences,2000and2002,werealsopublishedinSpringer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Arti?cial Intelligence (LNAI) series, volumes 1793 and 2313. The number of submissions to MICAI 2004 was signi?cantly higher than those of previous conferences - 254 papers from 19 di?erent countries were submitted for consideration to MICAI 2004.
The evaluation of this unexpectedly largenumberofpaperswasachallenge,bothintermsofthequalityofthepapers 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 con- rence. The volume is structured into 13 thematic ?elds according to the topics addressed by the papers, which are representative of the main current area of interest within the AI community.