The explosive growth in the number of video cameras and the increasing computing power of computers extend the potential number of applications of vision algorithms. It brings also new challenges to the vision community. In particular the design of intelligent and robust vision systems becomes a rising topic for both researchers and developers from academic fields and industriesworldwide. With this special issue we intend to cover all aspects of Intelligent Vision Systems. By this we mean vision systems that interact with or respond to their environment in a dynamic and adaptive manner, with an emphasis put on integrated systems that are robust enough to be deployed in largely unconstrained environments.