KEYWORDS: Smart Adaptive Systems, Evolutionary Computation, Fuzzy Systems, Machine Learning, Artificial Neural Networks.

This talk outlines some of the ideas and discussions carried on by RTD-SAS researchers during the first year of the EUNITE network. The focus is mainly on theoretical aspects of Smart Adaptive Systems that will serve as the basis for the creation of successful applications. Smart Adaptive Systems are of paramount importance in many application fields, where a changing environment is a common issue, but also extremely appealing, and equally challenging, from a theoretical point of view. Here, a first attempt to highlight some of the current knowledge on this field and, hopefully, to give a guideline for future research directions is reported.