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Advances in Connected and Automated Mobility: Sensing Technologies and Applications

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Vehicular Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 1751

Editors


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Guest Editor
Software Engineering Institute, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Interests: information security; cryptography; VANET security; cloud security; data privacy; network security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancashire LA1 4YW, UK
Interests: blockchain technology; cyber security; Artificial Intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor Assistant
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
Interests: intersection of security, privacy, and machine learning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The integration of 5G-Advanced, artificial intelligence (AI), and next-generation infrastructure is reshaping intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Today’s mobility ecosystems span space, air, and ground domains, encompassing autonomous vehicles, low-altitude drones, and space-based assets such as navigation and Earth observation satellites, along with low-Earth-orbit communication networks. These systems are increasingly endowed with cognitive capabilities, including environmental perception, autonomous decision-making, continuous learning, and real-time adaptation.

At the core of this paradigm shift is the ability to process and interpret vast streams of data. This Special Issue invites cutting-edge research that leverages large language models (LLMs) and other advanced AI methods to fuse, interpret, and extract actionable insights from multimodal sensor data. We seek submissions on scalable architectures that enhance the resilience, safety, and efficiency of connected and automated operations across all domains. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the application of blockchain for ensuring data integrity and trust in distributed networks, as well as security-by-design and privacy-preserving frameworks that underpin the reliable evolution of these complex systems.

The scope of this issue comprehensively encompasses the full data lifecycle—from sensor data acquisition and fusion to intelligent interpretation and secure sharing—addressing both the unique challenges and emerging opportunities within this highly interconnected mobility landscape.

This Special Issue invites contributions on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

  • Sensors for UAVs (e.g., lightweight LiDAR, multispectral cameras).
  • Next-generation V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) and U-Space (for drones) communication-sensing integration.
  • LLMs for interpreting complex traffic scenes and sensor data context.
  • AI-driven multi-sensor fusion algorithms for 3D scene reconstruction.
  • Foundation models for cross-domain (air, water, ground) perception.
  • Generative AI for sensor data simulation and augmentation.
  • Blockchain-based solutions for secure and tamper-proof sensor data sharing.
  • Privacy-preserving sensing techniques (e.g., federated learning for sensor data).
  • Secure V2X communication and cooperative perception.
  • Sensor systems for robotaxis, shared shuttles, and demand-responsive transport.
  • Autonomous navigation, obstacle detection, and port maneuvering via integrated sensing.
  • Edge computing and lightweight models for real-time sensor processing on constrained platforms (drones, vehicles).
  • Sensor data standards and interoperability across different transportation modalities.

Prof. Dr. Lei Zhang
Prof. Dr. Weizhi Meng
Guest Editors

Dr. Jiahuai Mao
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

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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

  • intelligent transportation systems
  • artificial intelligence (AI)
  • integrated space air ground networks
  • multimodal sensor data
  • large language models (LLMs)
  • trustworthy computing
  • privacy-preserving techniques
  • autonomous decision-making

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

33 pages, 7389 KB  
Article
Safe Predictor-Feedback CACC with V2X-Aware Adaptive Spacing for Heterogeneous Vehicle Platoons
by Jaehyeon Shin, Junhyeok An and Sungjin Lee
Sensors 2026, 26(15), 4806; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26154806 - 28 Jul 2026
Viewed by 287
Abstract
Vehicle-to-everything (V2X)-enabled cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is a key technology for improving both traffic efficiency and driving safety in vehicle-platooning scenarios. However, real-world platoons consist of heterogeneous vehicles with different actuation, computation, and mechanical delays, and communication latency also varies over time. [...] Read more.
Vehicle-to-everything (V2X)-enabled cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is a key technology for improving both traffic efficiency and driving safety in vehicle-platooning scenarios. However, real-world platoons consist of heterogeneous vehicles with different actuation, computation, and mechanical delays, and communication latency also varies over time. Therefore, conventional approaches based on homogeneous vehicles and fixed-delay assumptions may fail to guarantee physical rear-end collision avoidance under severe driving conditions. This paper proposes Safe PF-CACC, a predictor-feedback-based CACC framework that integrates a V2X-aware safe inter-vehicle distance (Safe IV Distance) model with adaptive time-headway scheduling for heterogeneous vehicle platoons. The proposed Safe IV Distance is computed by considering communication latency, vehicle dynamic delays, and friction-dependent braking limits. It consists of three components: a minimum margin (MM) for low-speed and standstill conditions, a response-lag loss (RLL) induced by communication and vehicle dynamic delays, and a braking-performance limit (BPL) caused by road-friction-dependent braking capability. The resulting Safe IV Distance is converted into a dynamic effective time headway and incorporated into the predictor-feedback (PF) controller, while a filtering process is applied to suppress abrupt gain-scheduling variations. To evaluate the proposed framework, three representative CACC scenarios were considered: heterogeneous passenger-vehicle platooning, emergency vehicle platooning, and truck platooning. The simulation results show that overly short spacings without real-time delay awareness can cause collisions in high-speed and emergency driving scenarios, whereas overly conservative spacings improve safety at the cost of increased road occupancy. In the heterogeneous passenger-vehicle scenario, the proposed Safe PF-CACC reduces the maximum jerk and mean spacing by 20.6% and 49.4%, respectively, compared with the existing conservative method. In the emergency vehicle scenario, it achieved collision-free operation while reducing the maximum jerk and mean spacing by 18.6% and 53.2%, respectively. In the truck-platooning scenario, stable jerk and acceleration responses are maintained while the mean spacing is reduced by 59.6%. These results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides a practical integrated control approach for maintaining both control stability and physical safety in CACC systems under time-varying communication delays and road friction uncertainty. Full article
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36 pages, 7770 KB  
Article
Performance Evaluation and Error Mitigation of Ultrasonic Indoor Positioning: An ESP32-Based IMU-ESKF Architecture
by Dongze Wang, Mohammed Faeik Ruzaij Al-Okby, Sadegh Refaeiabdolhosseinzadehneishabouri, Mohammed Ali Tlili and Kerstin Thurow
Sensors 2026, 26(13), 4090; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26134090 - 27 Jun 2026
Viewed by 568
Abstract
Reliable indoor localization is required for automated guided vehicles (AGVs), robot validation, and industrial digital-twin applications, but ultrasonic positioning can degrade sharply when acoustic visibility changes. This paper evaluates Marvelmind Super-Beacon localization in controlled laboratory experiments involving both AGV tracking and UR10 robot-arm [...] Read more.
Reliable indoor localization is required for automated guided vehicles (AGVs), robot validation, and industrial digital-twin applications, but ultrasonic positioning can degrade sharply when acoustic visibility changes. This paper evaluates Marvelmind Super-Beacon localization in controlled laboratory experiments involving both AGV tracking and UR10 robot-arm positioning. The non-inverse architecture (NIA) and inverse architecture (IA) configurations are included as parallel validation scenarios to assess the robustness of the proposed mitigation framework across different Marvelmind deployment modes. The baseline analysis identifies the dominant acoustic failure modes, including multipath-induced scatter, crossover-zone handover jumps, update-rate degradation, complete non-line-of-sight (NLoS) outages, and height-dependent 3D jitter. To mitigate these effects, an embedded ultrasonic–inertial pipeline is implemented on an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module. The system combines UART packet validation, interrupt-driven ICM-20948 inertial acquisition at 500 Hz, sliding-window kinematic outlier rejection, and a 15-state error-state Kalman filter (ESKF). The embedded estimator logic is designed to maintain motion continuity during intermittent or corrupted acoustic positioning while reintroducing validated ultrasonic absolute corrections. Using recorded AGV and UR10 datasets, mitigation performance was quantitatively assessed through a firmware-consistent replay of the recorded measurements, using the same gating, inertial propagation, and measurement-update logic as the real-time ESP32-S3 implementation. Across ten trials per configuration, the replay-based trial-mean RMSE in the 2D AGV scenarios decreased from 101.2–104.1 mm for raw ultrasonic data to 47.2–48.7 mm after fusion, while peak failure-interval errors were reduced by 64.2–65.7%. In the 3D UR10 scenarios, replay-based trial-mean RMSE decreased from 157.6–158.4 mm to 80.2–80.5 mm, and peak height-sensitive 3D errors were reduced by 58.8–60.0%. The results demonstrate the feasibility of embedded ultrasonic–inertial robustness enhancement for localization in controlled laboratory AGV and robot-arm scenarios. While the proposed approach shows promising performance under the investigated conditions, further validation is required before extending the conclusions to larger-scale and dynamically changing industrial environments. Full closed-loop online robot localization and control based directly on the fused localization output remain subjects for future investigation. Full article
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18 pages, 5064 KB  
Article
Spatial Calibration of Weigh-In-Motion Systems—Evaluation of Metrological Properties
by Janusz Gajda, Ryszard Sroka, Piotr Burnos and Mateusz Daniol
Sensors 2026, 26(13), 3978; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26133978 - 23 Jun 2026
Viewed by 413
Abstract
This article presents a method for calibration of dynamic vehicle weighing systems (WIM—Weigh-In-Motion) involving the calibration of all WIM stations operating within a given road network segment as a single process. A key assumption of the method is the presence of at least [...] Read more.
This article presents a method for calibration of dynamic vehicle weighing systems (WIM—Weigh-In-Motion) involving the calibration of all WIM stations operating within a given road network segment as a single process. A key assumption of the method is the presence of at least one scale with significantly higher accuracy than the calibrated systems in this part of road network. This reference scale function may be played by a static scale, slow-pass scale (LS-WIM—Low-Speed WIM) for measurement of vehicle axle load or by a selected WIM system with heightened accuracy. Both the reference scale and all systems undergoing calibration must be equipped with a system for the automatic recognition of vehicle registration number plates. The reference scale makes it possible to determine axle load values considered as benchmark values. Then, for each vehicle weighed on the reference scale and subsequently on any WIM system operating within the analysed area, the relative difference between the reference result and the WIM system measurement is calculated with respect to the reference value. This difference forms the basis for the operation of the algorithm estimating the coefficients of the static characteristic of the calibrated WIM system (so-called calibration coefficients), which are then used to determine corrected weighing results. The estimation of the coefficients is updated after each identified vehicle that has previously been weighed on the reference scale is considered. The article presents both the results of simulations and experimental studies concerning the proposed spatial method of calibration. The results obtained allow for an assessment of the effectiveness of the proposed solution. As can be seen from the analyses conducted, this method leads to a significant reduction in systematic error of vehicle weight measurement. Unfortunately, it does not eliminate random errors. The spatial calibration approach described in this paper has certain limitations. The main ones include the impact of ANPR system errors on calibration effectiveness, cases where a vehicle is unloaded or loaded between WIM stations, and the propagation of systematic errors from the reference systems to the other WIM systems. A significant advantage of the proposed spatial calibration method is that it can operate effectively using weighing data from a single reference WIM system and does not require heavy traffic volumes. Full article
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