Even if the economy nowadays is still locked into a linear model of production, tighter environmental standards, resource scarcity and changing consumer expectations are forcing organizations to find alternatives to lighten their impacts. The concept of Circular Economy (CE) is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to this series of challenges. That said, the multitude of approaches and definitions around CE and Life Cycle Extension Strategies (LCES) makes it difficult to provide (Small and Medium Enterprise) SMEs with a consistent understanding of the topic. This paper aims at bridging this gap by providing a systematic literature review of the most prominent papers related to the CE and lifetime extension, with a particular focus on the equipment and machinery sector. A taxonomy was used to define and cluster a subset of selected papers to build a homogeneous approach for understanding the multiple strategies used in the industry, and the standards in maintenance and remanufacturing strategies. As a final research step, we also propose a Strategy Characterization Framework (SCF) to build the ground for the selection of the best strategy to be applied for production equipment life cycle extension on several industrial use cases.

The latest advances in industry have been accomplished within the 4th Industrial Revolution, mostly noted as Industrie 4.0. This industrial revolution is boosted by the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into the industrial contexts, also known as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which is being supported by the implementation of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS). In this context, most of the existing work concentrates on developing IIoT models and CPPS architectures, laking the identification of validation requirements of these platforms. By rushing into releasing state-of-the-art IIoT applications, developers usually forget to implement methodologies to validate these applications. In this paper, we propose a list of requirements for IIoT platform validation, based on its architecture, as well as in requirements established by the industrial reality. A CPPS case study is presented, in order to illustrate some of these requisites and how validation of these type of system could be achieved.

This paper describes the development of a C3I (communications, command, control and intelligence/information) infrastructure, taking place at the Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (LSTS) of FEUP. This infrastructure, the Neptus framework, goal is to support the coordinated operation of heterogeneous teams, which include autonomous and remotely operated underwater, surface, land, and air vehicles and people. People perform a fundamental role, not only in the case of remotely operated vehicles, but also with autonomous vehicles where mix-initiative operation is a requirement. The operational scenarios for these teams are mainly environmental monitoring missions but could also include environmental disaster scenarios, rescue missions, etc. The Neptus distributed architecture is service oriented, which enables high degrees of interoperability between applications, of scalability (number of nodes), and of reconfiguration (number and type of nodes).

This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs), focusing on their applications, underlying techniques, and research gaps. A PRISMA-guided search across four major databases identified 21 relevant studies published between 2013 and 2024. The review shows that most AI-powered LADs are used for predicting academic performance, supporting self-regulated learning, and providing teacher-facing insights. Machine learning approaches such as decision trees, ensemble methods (AdaBoost, CatBoost), and Bayesian models are the most frequently employed, with ensemble methods often yielding stronger predictive performance. However, the literature highlights recurring limitations, including small-scale evaluations, limited causal evidence linking predictions to interventions, and weak deployment in real classroom contexts. Ethical considerations, particularly data privacy, bias, and explainability, are also insufficiently addressed. The review concludes by outlining open challenges and proposing directions for future research on scalable, explainable, and ethically grounded AI-powered LADs.

Designing and developing distributed cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) is a time-consuming, complex, and error-prone process. These systems are typically heterogeneous, i.e., they consist of multiple components implemented with different languages and development tools. One of the main problems nowadays in CPPS implementation is enabling security mechanisms by design while reducing the complexity and increasing the system’s maintainability. Adopting the IEC 61499 standard is an excellent approach to tackle these challenges by enabling the design, deployment, and management of CPPS in a model-based engineering methodology. We propose a method for CPPS design based on the IEC 61499 standard. The method allows designers to embed a bio-inspired anomaly-based host intrusion detection system (A-HIDS) in Edge devices. This A-HIDS is based on the incremental Dendritic Cell Algorithm (iDCA) and can analyze OPC UA network data exchanged between the Edge devices and detect attacks that target the CPPS’ Edge layer. This study’s findings have practical implications on the industrial security community by making novel contributions to the intrusion detection problem in CPPS considering immune-inspired solutions, and cost-effective security by design system implementation. According to the experimental data, the proposed solution can dramatically reduce design and code complexity while improving application maintainability and successfully detecting network attacks without negatively impacting the performance of the CPPS Edge devices.

Underwater acoustic networks can be quite effective to establish communication links between autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and other vehicles or control units, enabling complex vehicle applications and control scenarios. A communications and control framework to support the use of underwater acoustic networks and sample application scenarios are described for single and multi-AUV operation.