Dear IV 2007 Participants,

I would like to welcome you all to İstanbul for the 2007 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, an annual symposium of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. The work towards the organization of IV 2007 started about two years ago. We have worked very hard and have tried our best since then to organize a solid symposium. We hope that our efforts will pay off and that IV 2007 will be an enjoyable, fruitful and memorable experience for all of you.

The IV 2007 symposium is taking place at the Hilton Hotel in İstanbulduring June 13-15, 2007. The IV 2007 follows the tradition of previous IV symposia and uses a single session format. I believe that the technical program in the form of oral and poster presentations is very strong and that you will benefit from the direct interaction made possible through the single session format. We have organized a day of workshops on June 12, right before the symposium. The day of workshops is taking place in the conference rooms of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at İstanbulTechnical University. We have also organized a vehicle demo day on June 16, right after the symposium. This event is also taking place at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of İstanbulTechnical University. Two autonomous vehicles and several vehicles from automotive and electronics industry R&D departments will be displayed during the demo day.

The logo for IV 2007 was “Let’s meet where the continents meet.” Istanbul, connecting the two continents of Asia and Europe through the Bosphorus Strait is an ideal location for IV 2007. Accordingly, the symposium opening reception and the symposium banquet dinner locations both have very good views of the Bosphorus. The opening reception will take place on the evening of June 13, 2007 in the Kennedy Lodge of Boğaziçi University up on a hill overlooking the sea. The banquet dinner will take place in the Baltalimanı Restaurant of İstanbulUniversity which is right by the sea. Those of you who would like to have a half day tour of the old city can use our complimentary city tour on the afternoon of June 12, 2007 for a symbolic price. Our travel agent has organized several tours for you and your families including a boat tour on the evening of the last day of the symposium.

The organization of IV 2007 in İstanbulhelped increase the level of intelligent vehicle research in Turkey. Only three of the papers presented in IV 2006 had originated from Turkey. This number has risen to 15 in IV 2007 and will hopefully grow in future IV symposia. We realized the presence of the large variety of ITS related work taking place in Turkey during the organization of IV 2007. We hope that IV 2007 will also bring some coherence to these presently scattered efforts. For the IV 2007, paper submissions originated from 31 different countries. The highest number of papers is from Germany, France, Japan, China, United States, Turkey and Italy, listed in order of paper numbers.

The three plenary speeches of IV 2007 are organized in the form of two invited speeches and a panel discussion. The opening invited speech will be presented by Rosalie Zobel, on EU funded Research Activities in the Area of "Intelligent Vehicles".Giulio Vivo from International Liaison and Project Coordination at Advanced Electrical and Electronics Systems of Centro Ricerche Fiat. Dr. Vivo will give an overview of the EU FP6 SAFESPOT Integrated Project. A large number of European Union Framework Programme 6 project results are reported in the papers in IV 2007. The choice of the first two invited speeches is a reflection of this observation. With the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission on the way, I genuinely hope that IV 2007 will also form as a forum for fostering possible FP7 project partnerships. The third plenary is a panel discussion on State of Intelligent Vehicle Research/deployment Around the World moderated by Ümit Özgüner of the Ohio State University. The panelists are Levent Güvenç, Sadayuki Tsugawa, Tadao Saito and Gerd Wanielik.

The organization of symposia like this requires considerable effort by the volunteers involved. I would like to thank our advisory chair Ümit Özgüner for his continuous guidance and help. I would like the thank our Program Chair Petros Ioannau for his diligent efforts in coming up with a superb technical program and our Program Co-Chairs Christoph Stiller and Takaaki Hasegawa for their assistance towards that goal. Special thanks go to our finance chair Tankut Acarman who also worked like the vice general chair of this symposium. I would like to thank our other chairs Erdinç Altuğ (registration), Bilin Aksun Güvenç (publicity), Gökhan İnalhan (publicity), Ümit Sönmez (special sessions), Ahu Ece Hartavi (workshops), Ali Güvenç Göktan (demo day). My special thanks go to members of the İstanbulTechnical University Mekar Labs and Automotive Control and Mechatronics Research Center graduate students who worked in almost every aspect of the organization. I would also like to thank the donors of IV 2007 which are: İstanbul Technical University and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at İstanbul Technical University, Tübitak (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) and Ford Otosan.

In conclusion, I take great pride in welcoming you all in my city on behalf of the IV 2007 organization committee and I wish all of you a pleasant week during the symposium and an enjoyable stay in İstanbul and in Turkey. I hope that you will spend a memorable time in the next few days and that the IV 2007 symposium will produce fruitfull results for all of you.

Sincerely,

Levent Güvenç
General Chair IV 2007