AI for Smart Robotics: Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial intelligence has become fundamental to advancing robotic systems across industrial, service, and collaborative domains. This Special Issue addresses recent developments in machine learning architectures, perception systems, and decision-making frameworks that enable robots to operate effectively in unstructured environments.

Recent progress in vision–language models, foundation models, and multi-modal learning has opened new possibilities for robot manipulation, navigation, and human–robot interaction. However, significant challenges remain in areas such as simultaneous localization and mapping in dynamic environments, where traditional static-world assumptions fail; robust navigation through crowded spaces with moving agents; sim-to-real transfer; and sample efficiency in learning-based approaches. Real-time processing constraints pose additional difficulties for deploying complex neural architectures on resource-limited robotic platforms, while safety assurance in unpredictable settings requires novel verification methods. Distinguishing between static and dynamic scene elements, achieving long-term autonomy in changing environments, and implementing adaptive path planning represent ongoing research priorities. Edge computing and distributed intelligence present promising directions for deploying AI-enabled robotics in resource-constrained applications.

This Special Issue solicits contributions that examine novel algorithms, system architectures, and experimental validations addressing these challenges. Topics of interest include learning from demonstration, adaptive control strategies, explainable AI for robotic decision-making, dynamic SLAM algorithms, and benchmarking methodologies. Both theoretical advances and practical implementations are welcomed, with emphasis on reproducible research that advances the field toward more capable, reliable, and accessible robotic systems for real-world deployment.

Dr. João Braun
Dr. João Mendes
Guest Editors

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