Search Results (142)

The mobile network ecosystem is undergoing profound change driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). These technologies are well positioned to enable the essential transformation of next-generation networks, delivering significant improvements in efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability. AI is expected to impact the entire lifecycle of mobile networks, including design, deployment, service implementation, and long-term management. This article reviews the key characteristics of 5G and the anticipated technology enablers of 6G, focusing on the integration of AI within mobile networks. This study addresses several perspectives, including network optimization, predictive analytics, and security enhancement. A taxonomy is proposed to classify AI applications into 5G and 6G according to their role in network operations and their impact across vertical domains such as the Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare, and transportation. Furthermore, emerging trends are discussed, including federated learning, advanced AI models, and explainable AI, along with major challenges related to data privacy, adaptability, and interoperability. This paper concludes with future research directions, emphasizing the importance of ethical AI policies and cross-sector collaborations to ensure effective and sustainable AI-enabled mobile networks. Full article

Smart textiles are emerging as transformative modern textiles in which sensing, actuation, and communication are directly embedded into textiles, extending their role far beyond passive wearables. This review presents a comprehensive analysis of the convergence between smart textiles, the Internet of Things (IoT), and human-centric design, with sustainability as a guiding principle. We examine recent advances in conductive fibers, textile-based sensors, and communication protocols, while emphasizing user comfort, unobtrusiveness, and ecological responsibility. Key breakthroughs, such as silk fibroin ionic touch screens (SFITS), illustrate the potential of biodegradable and high-performance interfaces that reduce electronic waste and enable seamless human–computer interaction. The paper highlights cross-sector applications ranging from healthcare and sports to defense, fashion, and robotics, where IoT-enabled textiles deliver real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and adaptive feedback. The review also focuses on sustainability challenges, including energy-intensive manufacturing and e-waste generation, and reviews ongoing strategies such as biodegradable polymers, modular architectures, and design-for-disassembly approaches. Furthermore, to identify future research priorities in AI-integrated “textile brains,” self-healing materials, bio-integrated systems, and standardized safety and ethical frameworks are also visited. Taken together, this review emphasizes the pivotal role of smart textiles as a cornerstone of next-generation wearable technology, with the potential to enhance human well-being while advancing global sustainability goals. Full article

The global increase in dementia cases, which is predicted to exceed 152 million by 2050, poses substantial challenges to healthcare systems and caregiving structures. Concurrently, the expansion of mobile health (mHealth) technologies offers scalable, cost-effective opportunities for dementia care. This study systematically reviews 100 publicly available dementia-related mobile applications on the Apple App Store (iOS) and the Google Play Store (Android), categorised using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), as well as the targeted end-users, Internet of Things (IoT) integration, data protection, and cost burden. Applications were evaluated for their utility in cognitive training, memory support, carer education, clinical decision-making, and emotional well-being. Findings indicate a predominance of carer resources and support tools, while clinically integrated platforms, cognitive assessments, and adaptive memory aids remain underrepresented. Most apps lack empirical validation, inclusive design, and integration with electronic health records, raising ethical concerns around data privacy, transparency, and informed consent. In parallel, the study identifies promising pathways for energy-optimised IoT systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies in fostering dementia-friendly, sustainable environments. Key gaps include limited use of low-power wearables, energy-efficient sensors, and smart infrastructure tailored to therapeutic needs. Application domains such as cognitive training (19 apps) and carer resources (28 apps) show early potential, while emerging innovations in neuroadaptive architecture and emotional computing remain underexplored. The findings emphasize the need for co-designed, evidence-based digital solutions that align with the evolving needs of people with dementia, carers, and clinicians. Future innovations must integrate sustainability principles, promote interoperability, and support global aging populations through ecologically responsible, person-centred dementia care ecosystems. Full article

Smart furniture represents a growing field that integrates Internet of Things (IoT), embedded systems and assistive technologies, yet lacks a comprehensive synthesis of its components and applications. This PRISMA-guided systematic review analysed 35 studies published between 2014 and 2024, sourced from PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. The included studies presented prototypes of smart furniture that used IoT, sensors or automation. The focus was on extracting data related to technological configurations, functional uses, validation methods, maturity levels and commercialisation. Three technological pillars emerged, data collection (n = 31 studies), transmission/processing (n = 30), and actuation (n = 22), often combined into multifunctional systems (n = 14). Health monitoring was the dominant application (n = 15), followed by environmental control (n = 8) and assistive functions for older adults (n = 8). Validation methods varied; 37% relied solely on laboratory testing, while 20% only involved end-users. Only one solution surpassed Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7 and is currently on the market. Current research remains pre-commercial, with gaps in AI integration, long-term validation, and participatory design. Smart furniture shows promise for healthcare and independent living, but requires standardised evaluation, ethical data practices, and co-creation to achieve market readiness. Full article

In today’s rapidly advancing healthcare landscape, integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has the potential to significantly improve patient care and streamline medical processes. The utilization of confidential patient data to train and develop these technologies, however, raises significant concerns regarding authenticity, security, and privacy. In this study, we introduce MediChainAI, a safe and practical framework that allows patients full ownership over their own health data by integrating Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Blockchain, and sophisticated cryptography techniques. By clearly outlining the goals and parameters of this access, MediChainAI allows patients to safely and selectively share data with healthcare providers and researchers. While SSI guarantees that patients have ownership of their data, the framework uses Blockchain technology to keep things transparent and secure. Further, MediChainAI makes use of Merkle trees, which provide verified access to subsets of data without jeopardizing the privacy of the whole dataset. The encryption mechanism, which is based on smart contracts, is a distinctive feature of the framework that allows researchers and medical practitioners controlled and secure access to patient data. In order to improve the accuracy and reliability of medical diagnoses and treatment, this strategy makes sure that only confirmed, legitimate data is utilized to train medical models. A significant step toward safer and more personalized healthcare, MediChainAI encourages ethical and patient-focused innovation by effectively resolving essential issues regarding data security and patient privacy. Full article

This study lays the foundation for a multidimensional framework aimed at facilitating the effective integration of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) technologies into real-world health management systems. It critically examines the technological, organizational, and societal barriers that hinder this transition and identifies key enabling conditions, such as interoperability, user co-design, and ethical design principles, that promote sustainability, inclusiveness, and trust. By proposing a structured approach to integration, this paper aims to bridge the gap between innovation and long-term, reliable adoption across diverse healthcare contexts. Full article

With the digital transformation of the construction industry toward intelligent construction, advanced digital technologies—including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Twins (DTs), and Internet of Things (IoT)—increasingly support Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC), offering productivity gains while introducing new safety risks. This study presents a systematic review of digital technology applications and risk management practices in HRC scenarios within intelligent construction environments. Following the PRISMA protocol, this study retrieved 7640 publications from the Web of Science database. After screening, 70 high-quality studies were selected for in-depth analysis. This review identifies four core digital technologies central to current HRC research: multi-modal acquisition technology, artificial intelligence learning technology (AI learning technology), Digital Twins (DTs), and Augmented Reality (AR). Based on the findings, this study constructed a systematic framework for digital technology in HRC, consisting of data acquisition and perception, data transmission and storage, intelligent analysis and decision support, human–machine interaction and collaboration, and intelligent equipment and automation. The study highlights core challenges across risk management stages, including difficulties in multi-modal fusion (risk identification), lack of quantitative systems (risk assessment), real-time performance issues (risk response), and weak feedback loops in risk monitoring and continuous improvement. Moreover, future research directions are proposed, including trust in HRC, privacy and ethics, and closed-loop optimization. This research provides theoretical insights and practical recommendations for advancing digital safety systems and supporting the safe digital transformation of the construction industry. These research findings hold significant important implications for advancing the digital transformation of the construction industry and enabling efficient risk management. Full article

The integration of smart medical devices (SMDs) driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of medical things (IoMT) is revolutionizing healthcare through improved diagnostics and continuous monitoring. However, their deployment raises significant ethical concerns, including patient safety, data privacy, informed consent, fairness, bias, and regulatory compliance. This paper presents a structured prioritization framework that assesses these ethical considerations according to their severity, contextual impact, and relevance to clinical practice. The usefulness of this prioritization lies in its ability to guide stakeholders to focus on high-impact areas, ensuring that resources and interventions address the most critical ethical risks first. Targeted mitigation strategies support the application of this framework in practice. By aligning innovation with ethical responsibility, this approach promotes safer, fairer, and more reliable healthcare solutions. This ultimately enables the sustainable and socially responsible integration of SMDs into modern medical systems. Full article

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have emerged as promising solutions to overcome the shortcomings of traditional highway-monitoring approaches. UAVs have been used extensively for highway traffic monitoring, infrastructure inspection, safety analysis, and environmental management. This review summarizes the latest applications, contributions, and challenges of UAV technology in highway systems, highlighting their transformative impacts on traffic monitoring, infrastructure inspection, and safety assessment. Several UAV-based highway traffic datasets significantly improve research in traffic behavior analysis and automated driving system validation. The integration of UAVs with advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G, further enhances their capabilities, enabling enhanced real-time analytics and better decision-making support. Addressing ethical, regulatory, and social implications through transparent governance and privacy-preserving technologies is essential for sustainable deployment. Full article

The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into public healthcare enables continuous monitoring and sustainable health management. However, conventional frameworks often depend on transmitting and storing raw personal data on centralized servers, posing challenges related to privacy, security, ethical compliance, and long-term sustainability. This study proposes a privacy-preserving framework that avoids the exposure of true health-related data. Sensor nodes encrypt collected measurements and collaborate with a secure computation core to evaluate health indicators under homomorphic encryption, maintaining confidentiality. For example, the system can determine whether a patient’s heart rate within a monitoring window falls inside clinically recommended thresholds, while the framework remains general enough to support a wide range of encrypted computations. A compliance verification client generates zero-knowledge range proofs, allowing external parties to verify whether health indicators meet predefined conditions without accessing actual values. Simulation results confirm the correctness of encrypted computation, controllability of threshold-based compliance judgments, and resistance to inference attacks. The proposed framework provides a practical solution for secure, auditable, and sustainable real-time health assessment in IoT-enabled public healthcare systems. Full article

Recent advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are unlocking transformative opportunities across society. One of the most critical challenges addressed by these technologies is the ageing population, which presents mounting concerns for healthcare systems and quality of life worldwide. By supporting continuous monitoring, personal care, and data-driven decision-making, IoT and AI are shifting healthcare delivery from a reactive approach to a proactive one. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of IoT-based systems with a particular focus on the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) and their integration with AI, referred to as the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT). We illustrate the operating procedures of IoHT systems in detail. We highlight their applications in disease management, health promotion, and active ageing. Key enabling technologies, including cloud computing, edge computing architectures, machine learning, and smart sensors, are examined in relation to continuous health monitoring, personalized interventions, and predictive decision support. This paper also indicates potential challenges that IoHT systems face, including data privacy, ethical concerns, and technology transition and aversion, and it reviews corresponding defense mechanisms from perception, policy, and technology levels. Future research directions are discussed, including explainable AI, digital twins, metaverse applications, and multimodal sensor fusion. By integrating IoT and AI, these systems offer the potential to support more adaptive and human-centered healthcare delivery, ultimately improving treatment outcomes and supporting healthy ageing. Full article

The sudden increase in global energy demand has prompted the integration of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things into the utility grid. The synergy of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things in renewable energy sources has emerged as a promising solution for the development of smart grids and a transformative catalyst that restructures centralized power systems into resilient and sustainable systems. The state-of-the-art of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence is presented in this paper to support the design, planning, operation, management and optimization of renewable energy-based power systems. This paper outlines the benefits of smart and resilient energy systems and the contributions of the Internet of Things across several applications, devices and networks. Artificial Intelligence can be utilized for predictive maintenance, demand-side management, fault detection, forecasting and scheduling. This paper highlights crucial future research directions aimed at overcoming the challenges that are associated with the adoption of emerging technologies in the power system by focusing on market policy and regulation and the human-centric and ethical aspects of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. The outcomes of this study can be used by policymakers, researchers and development agencies to improve global access to electricity and accelerate the development of sustainable energy systems. Full article

The medical application of human embryonic stem cell technology has sparked ethical controversies, with the core issue being whether human embryos possess the same right to life as humans. According to classical Confucianism, humans are born from the essential Qi 精氣 (jingqi) of heaven and earth, making them the noblest beings in the world. Human embryos are the simple form of human life in its early stages, and as living human beings, they should therefore possess the legitimacy and justification to life. Confucianism advocates benevolence toward people 仁民 (renmin) and love for things 愛物 (aiwu) distinguishing between benevolence and love: benevolence toward people is benevolence, while love for all things is love. How people treat one another is how they should treat human embryos. Things exist to serve humanity; humans may utilise things but must not be treated as tools. Embryo life must not be harmed or sacrificed for the sake of saving human life. One should show benevolence to people and love to things. Therefore, the attitude toward human embryos should be “benevolence.” Human embryos inherently possess the potential to become human beings and do not require medical intervention to demonstrate their value. However, when humans extract and utilise stem cells from human embryos for their own benefit, this is tantamount to treating the embryos as things and reducing them to the status of things, thereby blurring the ethical boundaries between humans and things and disrupting the distinction between the recipients of benevolence and love. The extraction of human embryonic stem cells is ultimately an artificial technological achievement. Humans are not superior beings to heaven, and such practices must be confined within the moral framework of technological ethics and bioethics. Notwithstanding the technological advancements that have furnished humans with contemporary instruments, the necessity for a sense of awe for the heaven remains. Full article

God plays a central role in Spinoza’s philosophy, directly shaping his views of ethics and politics. His theology is examined in light of contemporary perspectives in process philosophy. Analysis of the claim that “The more we understand singular things the more we understand God” (E5p24), shows that Spinoza advances a participatory theology that prioritizes a developmental process that fosters loving-kindness and intellectual generosity. Religion is the virtue enabling our participation in divine power. The key characteristics of participation in divine power are that these powers are (1) non-scarce/open-source/sharable, (2) regenerative, (3) propagate from one context to another, and (4) potentiate novel, unforeseeable discovery and invention. It is through community with other singular beings and via social affects that we understand divinity: by participating in powers that are sharable and continue to intensify and evolve when made openly accessible. His ideas can inspire our current problematic in beneficial ways. Full article

This investigation highlights the importance of adopting ethical and sustainable practices in chicken farming, in response to the increasing global demand for poultry products driven by the expanding world population. How ambient gases, such as hydrogen sulfide ($H_{2}S$), nitrous oxide ($N_{2}O$), ammonia ($N{H}_3$), carbon dioxide ($C{O}_2$), and methane ($C{H}_4$), affect the welfare of farm workers and poultry is investigated. The use of various gas sensor technologies is crucial for effective management and monitoring of these gases. The research emphasizes the vital importance of precise gas concentration measurements in mitigating environmental impact. It is noteworthy that there is a closely intertwined relationship between $C{O}_2$ levels and chicken health, requiring vigilant monitoring and care. There are potential risks associated with $N{H}_3$ exposure, and waste management and ventilation practices are necessary. Furthermore, the contribution of $C{H}_4$ sensors to environmental sustainability and safety is addressed. The review also examines $H_{2}S$ emissions, providing mitigation strategies to safeguard avian health. This study identifies an important gap between the limited use of commercially available Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) sensors in the commercial Internet of Things (IoT) systems for poultry farms and their potential to detect a wider range of chemical gases. The pivotal role played by gas sensors in these sustainable efforts is highlighted. Full article