The advance of technology has enabled the development of unmanned systems/vehicles used in the air, on the ground or on/in the water. The application range for these systems is continuously increasing, and unmanned platforms continue to be the subject of numerous studies and research contributions. This paper deals with the role of sensors and measurements in ensuring that unmanned systems work properly, meet the requirements of the target application, provide and increase their navigation capabilities, and suitably monitor and gain information on several physical quantities in the environment around them. Unmanned system types and the critical environmental factors affecting their performance are discussed. The measurements that these kinds of vehicles can carry out are presented and discussed, while also describing the most frequently used on-board sensor technologies, as well as their advantages and limitations. The paper provides some examples of sensor specifications related to some current applications, as well as describing the recent research contributions in the field.

Unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs) safety has gained great research interest due to the increase in the number of UAVs in circulation and their applications, which has inevitably also led to an increase in the number of accidents in which these vehicles are involved. The paper presents a classification of UAV safety solutions that can be found in the scientific literature, putting in evidence the fundamental and critical role of sensors and measurements in the field. Proposals from research on each proposed class concerning flight test procedures, in-flight solutions including soft propeller use, fault and damage detection, collision avoidance and safe landing, as well as ground solution including testing and injury and damage quantification measurements are discussed.

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are critical components of signal-processing systems. ADC errors can compromise the overall accuracy and the effectiveness of the whole system. This leads researchers to direct increasing attention to error correction topics. In this paper, some ADC error compensation methods are briefly introduced according to a classification criterion based on the main research trends.

Today, most of the signal processing performed in electronic systems is digital, and the performance of the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) present at the borders of the digital domain become very important. The most recent applications in telecommunication, measurement, and consumer electronics call for ever-increasing ADC resolution and speed. The uncertainty of ADC performance strongly affects overall system accuracy. Both manufacturers and system integrators are intensely concerned with ADC performance.

Most of automatic blood pressure measurement devices on the market implement an oscillometric method. This paper highlights the need for standardized calibration procedures for these devices in order to reduce logistical difficulties, time-consuming processes, and high costs involved in clinical validations. A critical overview of researchers' and manufacturers' proposals to answer this need is presented as a contribution to the IEEE P1721 project for a new standard on Objective Measurement of Systemic Arterial Blood Pressure in Humans.

In this paper, an overview of the research challenges in measurements for the design of Internet of Things (IoT) systems is proposed. To this end, a general architecture of an IoT system is presented, which is specialized according to two key requirements: the power supply capabilities of the infrastructure and the time delay constraints of the application. Guidelines for the design of an IoT system are summarized, and the measurement needs are highlighted. A review of the research contributions is given concerning three main measurement topics: (i) energy-aware data acquisition systems, (ii) localization of mobile IoT nodes, and (iii) precise synchronization protocols.