Sensors and Sensing Technologies for Social Robots
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensors and Robotics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 339
Special Issue Editors
Interests: social robotics; artificial vision; autonomous robots; human-robot interaction; social navigation; pose analysis; gesture recognition
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: social robots; artificial vision; smart environments
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Recent technological advances have made it possible to initiate a progressive deployment of service robots in daily life contexts. These next-generation robots are connected to smart environments and other agents, rely on artificial intelligence-based solutions to interact with people using natural channels and cooperate with humans and other agents to accomplish different tasks.
Robots working in these settings must be aware of their context, not only physical but also social. They need to perceive, understand, and adapt their behavior to this context, with special emphasis on perceiving and predicting people’s activities. New sensors and combinations of sensors are employed to help with achieving these tasks, ranging from multicamera systems to radar-based person recognizers, considering both sensors mounted on the robot and others located in the environment or in other agents. The nature and characteristics of these sensors are also influenced by the application domain in which the robot is deployed, ranging from industrial co-workers to home assistants.
In addition to new sensing approaches, Vision–Language Models (VLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for perception, enabling robots to process and interpret complex visual input.
We invite contributions on novel methods, applications, and developments integrating VLMs, advanced sensing techniques, and AI-based solutions for social robots. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Artificial vision systems;
- Person activity recognition;
- Remote person monitoring sensors;
- Sensors for socially assistive robots;
- Multimodal sensor fusion;
- FPGA- and ASIC-based sensor solutions for social robots.
Prof. Dr. Juan Pedro Bandera
Dr. Suna Bensch
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- social robots
- sensor fusion
- artificial vision
- object detection
- activity recognition
- human–robot interaction
- shared perception
- multiagent cooperation
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
