Deploying Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms in delivery systems is still in its infancy with regards to the technology, safety, aviation rules and regulations. Optimal use of UAVs in dynamic environments is important in many aspects- e.g., increasing efficacy, reducing the air traffic resulting in safer environment, and it requires new techniques and robust approaches based on the capabilities of UAVs and constraints. This paper analyses several delivery schemes within a platform, such as delivery with and without using air highways, and delivery using a hybrid scheme along with several delivery methods (i.e., optimal, premium and FIFO) to explore the use of UAV swarms as part of the logistics operations. In this platform, a dimension reduction technique, “dynamic multiple assignments in multi-dimensional space” (dMAiMD) and several other new techniques along with Hungarian and Cross-entropy Monte Carlo techniques are forged together to assign tasks and plan 3D routes dynamically. This particular approach is performed in such a way that UAV swarms in several warehouses are deployed optimally given the delivery scheme, method and constraints. Several scenarios are tested on the simulator using small and big data sets. The results show that the distribution and the characteristics of data sets and constraints affect the decision on choosing the optimal delivery scheme and method. The findings are expected to guide the aviation authorities in their decisions before dictating rules and regulations regarding effective, efficient and safe use of UAVs. Furthermore, the companies that produce UAVs are going to take the demonstrated results into account for their functional design of UAVs along with other companies that aim to deliver their products using UAVs. Additionally, private industries, logistics operators, municipalities are expected to benefit from the potential adoption of the simulator in strategic decisions before embarking on the practical implementation of UAV delivery systems.

The movie — The Matrix (1999) — boosted our imagination about how further we can be immersed within the cyber world, i.e., how further the cyber world can be indistinguishable from the real world with the metaverse space travel. Nobody had expected involving the creators that the aspirational fictional virtual worlds such as "ActiveWorlds (1995)", and “Second Life (2003)” with many urban experiences embedded into a rich featured 3D environment would impact the way of experiencing our real urban environments. Are we going to feel/become ourselves — our cyber-physical presence (e.g., our augmented avatars) — in other mirror worlds doing many other things? Are the created imaginary worlds becoming a part of the real worlds or vice versa? The recent once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has confirmed the importance of location and time-independent Digital Twins (DTs) (i.e., virtual scale models) of cities and their automated services that can provide everybody with equity and accessibility by democratising all types of services leading to increased Quality of Life (QoL). This study analyses how the metaverse (3D elevation of linear Internet), that aims to build high-fidelity virtual worlds with which to interact with the real world, can be engaged within the Smart City (SC) ecosystem with high immersive Quality of Experiences (QoE) and an urban metaverse ecosystem framework — MetaOmniCity — that is designed to demonstrate a variety of insights and orchestrational directions for policymakers, city planners and all other stakeholders about how to transform data-driven SCs with DTs into virtually inhabitable cities with a network of shared urban experiences from a metaverse point of view. MetaOmniCity, allowing the metaversification of cities with granular virtual societies, i.e., MetaSocieties, and eliminating the boundaries (e.g., time, space and language) between the real world and their virtual counterparts, can be shaped to the particular requirements and features of cities. This can pave the way for immersive globalisation with the bigger and richer metaverse of Country (MoC) and metaverse ofWorld (MoW) being an immersive DT of the broader universe with digitally connected cities by removing physical borders. MetaOmniCity is expected to accelerate the building, deployment, and adoption of immersive urban metaverse worlds/networks for citizens to interface with as an extension of real urban social and individual experiences.

The autonomy of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - self-governing in the aerospace discipline has been a remarkable research area with the development of the advanced bespoke microcontrollers embedded with advanced AI techniques for the last several decades. The road forward about the operational environment is certain about the swarms of fully automated UAVs (FAUAVs), that is, urban areas. FAUAVs with self-learning and self-decision-making abilities by executing non-trivial sequences of events with decimetre-level accuracy based on a set of rules, control loops and constraints using dynamic flight plans and trajectories are taking their indispensable parts within smart cities (SCs). Therefore, their integration with the SC components using real-time data analytics is urgent. This is mainly required to establish a better swarm intelligence along with a safer and optimised harmonious smart ecosystem that enables cooperative FAUAV-SC automation systems with collaborative automated intelligence engaging in the concepts of Internet of Everything (IoE) and Automation of Everything (AoE). Planning the future of cities with swarms of FAUAVs is explored in this paper to optimise the use of FAUAVs with a diverse range of applications and a contemporary methodology is proposed using a holistic framework — FAUAVinSCF equipped with various effective and efficient techniques along with a novel FAUAV routing technique customisable to the constraints of FAUAVs and urban areas. With the methodology, the components of SC and FAUAVs involving recent and impending technological advancements are moulded together to make this inevitable transformation a harmonious part of the inhabitants contributing to the cities’ liveability and sustainability. The framework consists of a decentralized agent-based control architecture that monitors and controls the swarms of resource-constraint FAUAVs for their real-time requirements in optimising their urban uses. The outcomes of the methodology suggest that the constraints of FAUAVs can be mitigated significantly in urban areas and consequently, their efficacy can be increased in realising their diverse range of missions.

A shared agreed-upon definition of “smart city” (SC) is not available and there is no “best formula” to follow in transforming each and every city into SC. In a broader inclusive definition, it can be described as an opportunistic concept that enhances harmony between the lives and the environment around those lives perpetually in a city by harnessing the smart technology enabling a comfortable and convenient living ecosystem paving the way towards smarter countries and the smarter planet. SCs are being implemented to combine governors, organisations, institutions, citizens, environment, and emerging technologies in a highly synergistic synchronised ecosystem in order to increase the quality of life (QoL) and enable a more sustainable future for urban life with increasing natural resource constraints. In this study, we analyse how to develop citizen- and resource-centric smarter cities based on the recent SC development initiatives with the successful use cases, future SC development plans, and many other particular SC development solutions. The main features of SC are presented in a framework fuelled by recent technological advancement, particular city requirements and dynamics. This framework—TCitySmartF 1) aims to aspire a platform that seamlessly forges engineering and technology solutions with social dynamics in a new philosophical city automation concept — socio-technical transitions, 2) incorporates many smart evolving components, best practices, and contemporary solutions into a coherent synergistic SC topology, 3) unfolds current and future opportunities in order to adopt smarter, safer and more sustainable urban environments, and 4) demonstrates a variety of insights and orchestrational directions for local governors and private sector about how to transform cities into smarter cities from the technological, social, economic and environmental point of view, particularly by both putting residents and urban dynamics at the forefront of the development with participatory planning and interaction for the robust community- and citizentailored services. The framework developed in this paper is aimed to be incorporated into the real-world SC development projects in Lancashire, UK.

Most of the vehicle manufacturers aim to deploy level-5 fully autonomous ground vehicles (FAGVs) on city roads in 2021 by leveraging extensive existing knowledge about sensors, actuators, telematics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) gained from the level-3 and level-4 autonomy. FAGVs by executing non-trivial sequences of events with decimetre-level accuracy live in Smart City (SC) and their integration with all the SC components and domains using real-time data analytics is urgent to establish better swarm intelligent systems and a safer and optimised harmonious smart environment enabling cooperative FAGVs-SC automation systems. The challenges of urbanisation, if unmet urgently, would entail severe economic and environmental impacts. The integration of FAGVs with SC helps improve the sustainability of a city and the functional and efficient deployment of hand over wheels on robotized city roads with behaviour coordination. SC can enable the exploitation of the full potential of FAGVs with embedded centralised systems within SC with highly distributed systems in a concept of Automation of Everything (AoE). This article proposes a synergistic integrated FAGV-SC holistic framework — FAGVinSCF in which all the components of SC and FAGVs involving recent and impending technological advancements are moulded to make the transformation from today’s driving society to future’s next-generation driverless society smoother and truly make self-driving technology a harmonious part of our cities with sustainable urban development. Based on FAGVinSCF, a simulation platform is built both to model the varying penetration levels of FAGV into mixed traffic and to perform the optimal self-driving behaviours of FAGV swarms. The results show that FAGVinSCF improves the urban traffic flow significantly without huge changes to the traffic infrastructure. With this framework, the concept of Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) is transformed into the concept of Automated ITS (A-ITS). Cities currently designed for cars can turn into cities developed for citizens using FAGVinSCF enabling more sustainable cities.

The recent advances in cyber-physical domains, cloud, cloudlet and edge platforms along with the evolving Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, big data analytics and cutting-edge wireless communication technologies within the Industry 4.0 (4IR) are urging mechatronics designers, practitioners and educators to further review the ways in which mechatronics systems are perceived, designed, manufactured and advanced. Within this scope, we introduce the service-oriented cyber-physical advanced mechatronics systems (AMSs) along with current and future challenges. The objective in AMSs is to create remarkable intelligent autonomous products by 1) forging effective sensing, self-learning, Wisdom as a Service (WaaS), Information as a Service (InaaS), precise decision making and actuation using effective location-independent monitoring, control and management techniques with products, and 2) maintaining a competitive edge through better product performances via immediate and continuous learning, while the products are being used by customers and are being produced in factories within the cycle of Automation of Everything (AoE). With the advanced wireless communication techniques and improved battery technologies, AMSs are capable of getting independent and working with other massive AMSs to construct robust, customisable, energy-efficient, autonomous, intelligent and immersive platforms. In this regard, rather than providing technological details, this paper implements philosophical insights into 1) how mechatronics systems are being transformed into AMSs, 2) how robust AMSs can be developed by both exploiting the wisdom created within cyber-physical smart domains in the edge and cloud platforms, and incorporating all the stakeholders with diverse objectives into all phases of the product life-cycle, and 3) what essential common features AMSs should acquire to increase the efficacy of products and prolong their product life. Against this background, an AMS development framework is proposed in order to contextualize all the necessary phases of AMS development and direct all stakeholders to rivet high quality products and services within AoE.