Due to its widespread application in the robotics field, the Kalman filter has received increased attention from researchers. This work reviews some of the modifications conducted on to this algorithm over the last years. Problems such as the consistency, convergence, and accuracy of the filter are also dealt with. Sixty years after its creation, the Kalman filter is still used in autonomous navigation processes, robot control, and trajectory tracking, among other activities. The filter is not only restricted to robotics but is also present in different fields, such as economics and medicine. In addition, the characteristics of each modification on this filter are analyzed and compared.

Industrial robotics has shifted from rigid, task-specific tools to adaptive, intelligent systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and sensor integration, revolutionizing efficiency and human–robot collaboration across manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and agriculture. Collaborative robots (cobots) slash assembly times by 30% and boost quality by 15%, while reinforcement learning enhances autonomy, cutting errors by 30% and energy use by 20%. Yet, this review transcends descriptive summaries, critically synthesizing these trends to expose unresolved tensions in scalability, cost, and societal impact. High implementation costs and legacy system incompatibilities hinder adoption, particularly for SMEs, while interoperability gaps—despite frameworks, like OPC UA—stifle multi-vendor ecosystems. Ethical challenges, including workforce displacement and cybersecurity risks, further complicate progress, underscoring a fragmented field where innovation outpaces practical integration. Drawing on a systematic review of high-impact literature, this study uniquely bridges technological advancements with interdisciplinary applications, revealing disparities in economic feasibility and equitable access. It critiques the literature’s isolation of trends—cobots’ safety, ML’s autonomy, and perception’s precision—proposing the following cohesive research directions: cost-effective modularity, standardized protocols, and ethical frameworks. By prioritizing scalability, interoperability, and sustainability, this paper charts a path for robotics to evolve inclusively, offering actionable insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers navigating this dynamic landscape.

In this article, we propose a new scheme for a fuzzy logic controller, which includes acceleration as one of its linguistic variables, as opposed to other techniques and approaches that have been developed and reported in the literature. This method is used for controlling the tracking of the trajectory followed by the joints of a 2-DoF manipulator robot. To this end, a complete simulation environment is developed through the MatLab/Simulink^® software. The dynamic model of the manipulator robot includes a vector that consists of the estimate of the friction forces present in the joints. Then, a controller based on fuzzy logic is designed and implemented for each joint. Finally, the performance of the developed system is assessed and then compared to the performance of a classic PID controller. The incorporation of the fuzzy variable acceleration significantly improved the system’s response.

The use of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in the communications of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) demands more comprehensive solutions than those developed to date. The lack of an SDN solution applicable in diverse IIoT scenarios is the problem addressed in this article. The main cause of this problem is the lack of integration of a set of aspects that should be considered in a comprehensive SDN solution. To contribute to the solution of this problem, a review of the literature is conducted in this article, identifying the main requirements for industrial networks nowadays as well as their solutions through SDN. This review indicates that aspects such as security, independence of the network technology used, and network centralized management can be tackled using SDN. All the advantages of this technology can be obtained through the implementation of the same solution, considering a set of aspects proposed by the authors for the implementation of SDNs in IIoT networks. Additionally, after analyzing the main features and advantages of several architectures proposed in the literature, an architecture with distributed network control is proposed for all SDN network scenarios in IIoT. This architecture can be adapted through the inclusion of other necessary elements in specific scenarios. The distributed network control feature is relevant here, as it prevents a single fault-point for an entire industrial network, in exchange for adding some complexity to the network. Finally, the first ideas for the selection of an SDN controller suitable for IIoT scenarios are included, as this is the core element in the proposed architecture. The initial proposal includes the identification of six controllers, which correspond to different types of control planes, and ten characteristics are defined for selecting the most suitable controller through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The analysis and proposal of different fundamental aspects for the implementation of SDNs in IIoT in this article contribute to the development of a comprehensive solution that is not focused on the characteristics of a specific scenario and would, therefore, be applicable in limited situations.

The semantic segmentation (SS) of low-contrast images (LCIs) remains a significant challenge in computer vision, particularly for sensor-driven applications like medical imaging, autonomous navigation, and industrial defect detection, where accurate object delineation is critical. This systematic review develops a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art deep learning (DL) techniques to improve segmentation accuracy in LCI scenarios by addressing key challenges such as diffuse boundaries and regions with similar pixel intensities. It tackles primary challenges, such as diffuse boundaries and regions with similar pixel intensities, which limit conventional methods. Key advancements include attention mechanisms, multi-scale feature extraction, and hybrid architectures combining Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with Vision Transformers (ViTs), which expand the Effective Receptive Field (ERF), improve feature representation, and optimize information flow. We compare the performance of 25 models, evaluating accuracy (e.g., mean Intersection over Union (mIoU), Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC)), computational efficiency, and robustness across benchmark datasets relevant to automation and robotics. This review identifies limitations, including the scarcity of diverse, annotated LCI datasets and the high computational demands of transformer-based models. Future opportunities emphasize lightweight architectures, advanced data augmentation, integration with multimodal sensor data (e.g., LiDAR, thermal imaging), and ethically transparent AI to build trust in automation systems. This work contributes a practical guide for enhancing LCI segmentation, improving mean accuracy metrics like mIoU by up to 15% in sensor-based applications, as evidenced by benchmark comparisons. It serves as a concise, comprehensive guide for researchers and practitioners advancing DL-based LCI segmentation in real-world sensor applications.