Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems, PerMIS 2008, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, August 19-21, 2008

The 2008 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS'08) Workshop is the eighth in the series that started in 2000, targeted at defining measures and methodologies of evaluating performance of intelligent systems. The workshop has proved to be an excellent forum for discussions and partnerships, dissemination of ideas, and future collaborations in an informal setting. Attendees usually include researchers, graduate students, practitioners from industry, academia, and government agencies. PerMIS'08 aims at identifying and quantifying contributions of functional intelligence towards achieving success. Our working definition of functional intelligence is "the ability to act appropriately in an uncertain environment, where appropriate action is that which increases the probability of success", and success is "the achievement of behavioral goals" (J. Albus, 1991). In addition to the main theme, as in previous years, the workshop focuses on applications of performance measures to practical problems in commercial, industrial, homeland security, and military applications. PerMIS'08 features five plenary addresses and seven special sessions. The plenary speakers are world-class experts in their own field and we are confident that the attendees will be able to benefit from their presentations. This year, there is a special session for every (parallel) general session. Over the course of three days, there will be twelve sessions related to performance of intelligent systems covering an array of topics from medical systems to manufacturing, mobile robotics to virtual automation, human-system interaction to biologically inspired models, and much more.