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"Intelligent Vehicles" is an application in which the words 'intelligent autonomous systems' represent not only an important research topic, but also a strategic solution to the mobility problem of the next years. Vehicles able to move autonomously and navigate in everyday traffic, in highway, urban, and unstructured scenarios, will become a reality in the next decades. Besides the obvious advantages of increasing road safety and improving the quality and efficiency of people and goods mobility, the integration of intelligent features and autonomous functionalities on vehicles will lead to major economical benefits such as reduction of fuel consumption, efficient exploitation of the road network, reduction of personnel. Furthermore, not only the automotive field (public transportation, trucks, and passengers cars) is interested in these new technologies, but other sectors as well, each with its own target (industrial vehicles, military systems, mission critical and unmanned rescue robots). In this second issue of the ITS Department -written in cooperation with the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Council (ITSC)- Richard Bishop focuses on "Intelligent Vehicles"; he presents a survey about the major projects and activities worldwide regarding not only automotive applications, but special vehicles as well. The newsletter of the IEEE ITS Council can be downloaded from the official Council's home page (http://www.ieee.org/itsc, which contains also information about the next ITS Conferences) or from the Italian mirror at: http://www.ce.unipr.it/itsc For further information and for suggestions, you can contact the Editor of this Department at: broggi@ce.unipr.it web page: http://www.ce.unipr.it/broggi