Inspections of concrete bridges across the United States represent a significant commitment of resources, given their biannual mandate for many structures. With a notable number of aging bridges, there is an imperative need to enhance the efficiency of these inspections. This study harnessed the power of computer vision to streamline the inspection process. Our experiment examined the efficacy of a state-of-the-art Visual Transformer (ViT) model combined with distinct image enhancement detector algorithms. We benchmarked against a deep learning Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model. These models were applied to over 20,000 high-quality images from the Concrete Images for Classification dataset. Traditional crack detection methods often fall short due to their heavy reliance on time and resources. This research pioneers bridge inspection by integrating ViT with diverse image enhancement detectors, significantly improving concrete crack detection accuracy. Notably, a custom-built CNN achieves over 99% accuracy with substantially lower training time than ViT, making it an efficient solution for enhancing safety and resource conservation in infrastructure management. These advancements enhance safety by enabling reliable detection and timely maintenance, but they also align with Industry 4.0 objectives, automating manual inspections, reducing costs, and advancing technological integration in public infrastructure management.

The rapid surge of Artificial Internet-of-Things (AIoT) devices has outpaced the deployment of robust, privacy-preserving anomaly detection solutions suitable for resource-constrained edge environments. This paper presents a two-stage hybrid Federated Learning (FL) framework for IoT anomaly detection and classification, validated on the real-world N-BaIoT dataset. In the first stage, each device trains a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) model on benign traffic only, and in the second stage a Histogram-based Gradient-Boosting (HGB) classifier labels flagged traffic. All models operate under a synchronous, collaborative FL architecture across nine commercial IoT devices, thus preserving data privacy and minimizing communication. Through both inter- and intra-benchmarking against state-of-the-art baselines, the Variational Autoencoder–HGB (VAE-HGB) pipeline emerges as the top performer, achieving an average end-to-end accuracy of 99.14% across all classes. These results demonstrate that reconstruction-driven generative AI models, when combined with federated averaging and efficient classification, deliver a highly scalable, accurate, and privacy-preserving solution for securing resource-constrained IoT environments.

The rapid growth of Internet-of-Things (IoT) deployments has substantially expanded the attack surface of modern cyber–physical systems, making accurate and computationally feasible malware detection essential for enterprise and industrial environments. This study presents a large-scale, systematic comparison of 27 machine learning (ML) and 18 deep learning (DL) models for IoT malware detection across eight major malware categories: Trojan, Botnet, Ransomware, Rootkit, Worm, Spyware, Keylogger, and Virus. A realistic dataset was constructed using 50,000 executable samples collected from the Any.Run platform, including 8000 malware instances (1000 per class) and 42,000 benign samples. Each sample was executed in a sandbox to extract detailed static and behavioral telemetry. A targeted feature-selection pipeline reduced the feature space to 47 diagnostic features spanning static properties, behavioral indicators, process/file/registry activity, debug signals, and network telemetry, yielding a compact representation suitable for malware detection in IoT settings. Experimental results demonstrate that ensemble tree-based ML models consistently dominate performance on the engineered tabular feature set as 7 of the top 10 models are ML, with CatBoost and LightGBM achieving near-ceiling accuracy and low false-positive rates. Per-malware analysis further shows that optimal model choice depends on malware behavior. CatBoost is best for Trojan/Spyware, LightGBM for Botnet, XGBoost for Worm, Extra Trees for Rootkit, and Random Forest for Keylogger, while DL models are competitive only for specific categories, with TabNet performing best for Ransomware and FT-Transformer for Virus. In addition, an end-to-end computational time analysis across all 45 models reveals a clear efficiency advantage for boosted tree ensembles relative to most DL architectures, supporting deployment feasibility on commodity CPU hardware. Overall, the study provides actionable guidance for designing adaptive IoT malware detection frameworks, recommending gradient-boosted ensemble ML models as the primary deployment choice, with selective DL models only when category-specific gains justify additional computational cost.

Despite advances in automation, the global manufacturing sector continues to rely heavily on manual package inspection, creating bottlenecks in production and increasing labor demands. Although disruptive technologies such as big data analytics, smart sensors, and machine learning have revolutionized industrial connectivity and strategic decision-making, real-time quality control (QC) on conveyor lines remains predominantly analog. This study proposes an intelligent package integrity monitoring system that integrates waste reduction strategies with both narrow and Generative AI approaches. Narrow AI models were deployed to detect package damage at full line speed, aiming to minimize manual intervention and reduce waste. Using a synthetically generated dataset of 200 paired top-and-side package images, we developed and evaluated 10 distinct detection pipelines combining various algorithms, image enhancements, model architectures, and data processing strategies. Several pipeline variants demonstrated high accuracy, precision, and recall, particularly those utilizing a YOLO v8 segmentation model. Notably, targeted preprocessing increased top-view MobileNetV2 accuracy from chance to 67.5%, advanced feature extractors with full enhancements achieved 77.5%, and a segmentation-based ensemble with feature extraction and binary classification reached 92.5% accuracy. These results underscore the feasibility of deploying AI-driven, real-time QC systems for sustainable and efficient manufacturing operations.