Present State and Future of the Intelligent Materials and Systems in Japan

At the 1 st conference on Intelligent Materials-ICIM'92-(Ohiso, Japan) the concept of the Intelligent Materials (IM) and how to be the material in the future were discussed by the author along the historical line of material as to hardware and software. Also, the necessity of the intelligent materials was emphasized. At the 3rd ICIM'96 (Lyon, France) the concept of the IM, the features of the "Smart" and "Intelligent" and IM as a Hierarchy with some recent examples were reported. At the 4th ICIM '98 (Makuhari, Japan), in order to introduce Japanese activities, 13 papers which received Takagi Awards were reported commemorating the conference host country Japan and those papers had been reported at IM symposium sponsored by IM Forum Japan since 1994 and those papers may provide a clue to find the future trend of IM.