The present manuscript aims at raising awareness of the endless possibilities of fractional calculus applied not only to system identification and control engineering, but also into sensing and filtering domains. The creation of the fractance device has enabled the physical realization of a new array of sensors capable of gathering more information. The same fractional-order electronic component has led to the possibility of exploring analog filtering techniques from a practical perspective, enlarging the horizon to a wider frequency range, with increased robustness to component variation, stability and noise reduction. Furthermore, fractional-order digital filters have developed to provide an alternative solution to higher-order integer-order filters, with increased design flexibility and better performance. The present study is a comprehensive review of the latest advances in fractional-order sensors and filters, with a focus on design methodologies and their real-life applicability reported in the last decade. The potential enhancements brought by the use of fractional calculus have been exploited as well in sensing and filtering techniques. Several extensions of the classical sensing and filtering methods have been proposed to date. The basics of fractional-order filters are reviewed, with a focus on the popular fractional-order Kalman filter, as well as those related to sensing. A detailed presentation of fractional-order filters is included in applications such as data transmission and networking, electrical and chemical engineering, biomedicine and various industrial fields.

Lately, the software development industry is going through a slow but real transformation. Software is increasingly a part of everything, and, software developers, are trying to cope with this exploding demand through more automation. The pipelining technique of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) has developed considerably due to the overwhelming demand for the deployment and deliverability of new features and applications. As a result, DevOps approaches and Agile principles have been developed, in which developers collaborate closely with infrastructure engineers to guarantee that their applications are deployed quickly and reliably. Thanks to pipeline approach thinking, the efficiency of projects has greatly improved. Agile practices represent the introduction to the system of new features in each sprint delivery. Those practices may contain well-developed features or can contain bugs or failures which impact the delivery. The pipeline approach, depicted in this paper, overcomes the problems of delivery, improving the delivery timeline, the test load steps, and the benchmarking tasks. It decreases system interruption by integrating multiple test steps and adds stability and deliverability to the entire process. It provides standardization which means having an established, time-tested process to use, and can also decrease ambiguity and guesswork, guarantee quality and boost productivity. This tool is developed with an interpreted language, namely Bash, which offers an easier method to integrate it into any platform. Based on the experimental results, we demonstrate the value that this solution currently creates. This solution provides an effective and efficient way to generate, manage, customize, and automate Agile-based CI and CD projects through automated pipelines. The suggested system acts as a starting point for standard CI/CD processes, caches Docker layers for subsequent usage, and implements highly available deliverables in a Kubernetes cluster using Helm. Changing the principles of this solution and expanding it into multiple platforms (windows) will be addressed in a future discussion.

It has been almost half a century since the first interest in autonomous robots was shown, and research is still continuing to improve their ability to make perfectly conscious decisions from a user safety point of view. These autonomous robots are now at a fairly advanced level, which means that their adoption rate in social environments is also increasing. This article reviews the current state of development of this technology and highlights the evolution of interest in it. We analyze and discuss specific areas of its use, for example, its functionality and current level of development. Finally, challenges related to the current level of research and new methods that are still being developed for the wider adoption of these autonomous robots are highlighted.

Breast cancer remains one of the leading causes of death among women worldwide. Early detection and diagnosis are crucial for effective treatment and improved patient outcome. In recent years, both deep learning and federated learning have demonstrated significant advancements in terms of their ability to reliably and securely diagnose breast cancer using various imaging techniques. Consequently, a thorough summary of recent advancements in the field of breast cancer screening and diagnosis using deep learning and federated learning, along with future research directions, is imperative. This study presents a comprehensive review of recent deep learning and federated learning-based methods for breast cancer screening and diagnosis from the classification, segmentation, and detection viewpoints using ultrasonography, mammography, magnetic resonance imaging, and histopathology images. In addition, novel deep learning and federated learning architectures that are used to reliably and securely diagnose breast cancer using various imaging techniques are highlighted. Finally, a discussion of the associated challenges and future research directions are presented.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) represent a new generation of digital systems, where cyber entities and physical devices cooperate towards a set of common goals. The research presented in this paper aims to contribute to the development of CPSs by proposing an open architecture applicable in environmental monitoring, consisting of three layers. The paper provides a detailed description of each one of the CPS's main components. The bottom layer, composed of wireless sensor nodes, allows the acquisition of data and their transfer to the upper layers. The top and middle layers, composed of a measurements database, a knowledge base, a multi-agent society and web services, assure the proper operation of the CPS based on decision rules and complex data analyses. The proposed architecture provides a high degree of flexibility and scalability.

Air compressors are vital across various sectors—automotive, manufacturing, buildings, and healthcare—as they provide pressurized air for air suspension systems in vehicles, supply power pneumatic machines throughout industrial production lines, and support non-clinical infrastructure within hospital environments, including pneumatic control systems, isolation room pressurization, and laboratory equipment operation. Ensuring that such components are reliable is critical, as unexpected failures can disrupt facility functions and compromise patient safety. Predictive maintenance (PdM) has emerged as a key factor in enhancing the reliability and operational efficiency of medical devices by leveraging sensor data and artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms to detect component degradation before functional failures occur. In this paper, a predictive maintenance solution for condition monitoring and fault prediction for the exhaust valve, bearings, water pump, and radiator of an air compressor is presented, by comparing a hybrid deep neural network (DNN) as a feature extractor and a support vector machine (SVM) for condition classification: a pure DNN classifier as well as a standalone SVM model. Additionally, each model was trained and validated on three devices—NVIDIA T4 GPU, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, and NVIDIA Jetson Nano—and performance reports in terms of latency, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions are presented. Moreover, three model agnostic explainable AI (XAI) methods were employed to increase the transparency of the hybrid model’s final decision: Shapley additive explanations (SHAP), local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME) and partial dependence plots (PDP). The hybrid model achieves on average 98.71%, 99.25%, 98.78%, and 99.01% performance in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score across all devices Additionally, the DNN baseline and SVM model achieve on average 93.2%, 88.33%, 90.45%, and 89.37%, as well as 93.34%, 88.11%, 95. 41%, and 91.62% performance in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score across all devices. The integration of XAI methods within the PdM pipeline offers enhanced transparency, interpretability, and trustworthiness of predictive outcomes, thereby facilitating informed decision-making among maintenance personnel.