Smart Sensors in Everyday Life: Field-Based Assessment of Normal and Pathological Human Behavior
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomedical Sensors".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 978
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
For both disciplinary and ideological reasons, human behavior—whether considered “normal” or pathological—has long been only sparsely quantified, and when it has been, this has most often occurred within the controlled setting of the laboratory. Since the early 2000s, however, the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) has fundamentally changed the landscape: it is now possible to collect rich, continuous, real‑world data on activities, postures, movements and interactions, to rapidly build large raw and curated datasets, and to analyze them using a wide range of computational tools, with reasonable costs and without relying exclusively on medical staff.
This shift from the lab to the field goes hand in hand with a major paradigm change. Beyond homogeneous cohorts and averaged behavioral profiles, it has become feasible to follow individuals longitudinally, at high temporal resolution, in their everyday environments. Such an approach opens up major perspectives for precision medicine and prevention, for the design of genuinely user‑centered human–machine interfaces, for fine‑grained monitoring of athletic performance, and for the analysis of artistic practice and creative processes.
The aim of this special issue is to capture this pivotal moment by bringing together contributions that explore the in‑the‑wild quantification of human behavior—normal or pathological—across a broad range of domains (clinical settings, sports, human–machine interaction, artistic environments, workplaces, public spaces, and beyond). We welcome methodological and empirical work, experimental and observational designs alike, as well as papers focusing on sensor development, metrics, modeling, or concrete applications. Contributions are also expected to engage explicitly with the ethical challenges raised by these approaches, including data protection, privacy, algorithmic transparency and explainability, and the fair distribution of benefits.
Dr. Pierre Paul Vidal
Guest Editor
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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-anonymized 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
- wearable sensors
- health monitoring
- behavioral sensing
- human–machine interaction
- biomechanics
- movement analysis
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.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
