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This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art in energy efficiency for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), focusing on energy sources, consumption models, energy-efficient locomotion, hardware energy consumption, optimization in path planning and scheduling methods, and to suggest future research directions.

The systematic literature review (SLR) identified 244 papers for analysis. Research articles published from 2010 onwards were searched in databases including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus using keywords and search criteria related to energy and power management in various robotic systems.

The review highlights the following key findings: batteries are the primary energy source for AMRs, with advances in battery management systems enhancing efficiency; hybrid models offer superior accuracy and robustness; locomotion contributes over 50% of a mobile robot’s total energy consumption, emphasizing the need for optimized control methods; factors such as the center of mass impact AMR energy consumption; path planning algorithms and scheduling methods are essential for energy optimization, with algorithm choice depending on specific requirements and constraints.

The review concentrates on wheeled robots, excluding walking ones. Future work should improve consumption models, explore optimization methods, examine artificial intelligence/machine learning roles and assess energy efficiency trade-offs.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of energy efficiency in AMRs, highlighting the key findings from the SLR and suggests future research directions for further advancements in this field.

The interaction of systems through a designated control channel has improved communication, efficiency, management, storage, processing, etc. across several industries. The construction industry is an industry that thrives on a well-planned workflow rhythm; a change in the environmental dynamism will either have a positive or negative impact on the output of the project planned for execution. More so, raising the need for effective collaboration through workflow and project planning, grid application in construction facilitates the relationship between the project reality and the end users, all with the aim of improving resources and value management. However, decentralisation of close-domain control can cause uncertainty and incompleteness of data. And this can be a big factor, especially when a complex project is being executed.

The lack of conceptual approaches for organizing and expressing capabilities, usage and impact of intelligent machines (IMs) in work settings is an obstacle to moving beyond isolated case examples, domain-specific studies, 2 × 2 frameworks and expert opinion in discussions of IMs and work. This paper's purpose is to illuminate many issues that often are not addressed directly in research, practice or punditry related to IMs. It pursues that purpose by presenting an integrated approach for identifying and organizing important aspects of analysis and evaluation related to IMs in work settings. 

This paper integrates previously published ideas related to work systems (WSs), smart devices and systems, facets of work, roles and responsibilities of information systems, interactions between people and machines and a range of criteria for evaluating system performance.

Eight principles outline a straightforward and flexible approach for analyzing and evaluating IMs and the WSs that use them. Those principles are based on the above ideas.

This paper provides a novel approach for identifying design choices for situated use of IMs. The breadth, depth and integration of this approach address a gap in existing literature, which rarely aspires to this paper’s thoroughness in combining ideas that support the description, analysis, design and evaluation of situated uses of IMs.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.

The information technology (IT) sector has been seen as central to society's transformation to a more just and sustainable society, which underlines teachers’ responsibility to foster engineers who can contribute specifically to such ends. This study aims to report an effort to significantly update an existing engineering programme in IT with this ambition and to analyse the effects and challenges associated with the transformation.

This study is based on a combination of action-oriented research based on implementing key changes to the curriculum; empirical investigations including surveys and interviews with students and teachers, and analysis of these; and a science and technology studies-inspired analysis.

Respondents were generally positive towards adding topics relating to sustainability. However, in the unmaking of traditional engineering subjects, changes created a conflict between core versus soft subjects in which the core subjects tended to gain the upper hand. This conflict can be turned into productive discussions by focusing on what kinds of engineers the authors’ educate and how students can be introduced to societal problems as an integrated part of their education.

This study can be helpful for educators in the engineering domain to support them in their efforts to transition from a (narrow) focus on traditional disciplines to one where the bettering of society is at the core.

This study provides a novel approach to the transformation of engineering education through a theoretical analysis seldom used in studies of higher education on a novel case study.

The United Nations (UN) adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); agenda 2030 focuses on Climate Action (goal 13), targeting climate adaptability, as well as resilience, awareness and improving policy mechanisms on climate change. In order to enhance climate adaptability, climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAP) is a necessary step. CSAP is a sustainable agriculture approach with a strong focus on climate dimensions. The three pillars of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) are ‘Adaptation’: adapting to climate change; ‘Resilience’: building resilience against it and ‘Remove’: reducing carbon emissions. The new world economy uses Industry 4.0 technologies for sustainable advancement, including blockchain technology, big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality, industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and services. Hence, technology plays a significant role in climate sustainable agriculture practices. This chapter shall consider three technologies consisting of IoT, AI and blockchain technology which contribute to CSAP in pre-harvesting (monitoring climate as well as fertility status, soil testing, etc.), harvesting (tilling, fertilisation, seed operations, etc.) and post-harvesting (predicting weather factors, seed varieties, etc.) periods of agriculture. All these three technologies work like the human nervous system; IoT helps in converting various information regarding demography, climate change, local agricultural needs, etc. into world data; AI works like a brain in combination with IoT, helps predict the use of climate-smart technology and blockchain, the memory part of the nervous system which deals with supply-side and ensures traceability as well as transparency for consumers as well as farmers. Hence, this chapter shall contribute to the importance of these three technologies in adopting CSAP in three stages of agriculture.

Manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have already noticed the tangible benefits offered by artificial intelligence (AI). Several approaches have been proposed with a view to support them in the processes entailed in this innovation path. These include multisided platforms created to enable the connection between SMEs and AI developers, making it easier for them to network each other. While such platforms are complex, they facilitate simultaneous interaction with several stakeholders and reaching out to new potential users (both SMEs and AI developers), through a collaboration with supporting ecosystems such as digital innovation hubs (DIHs).

Mixed methods were used. The literature review was performed to identify the existing approaches within and outside the manufacturing domain. Computer-assisted telephonic (in-depth) interviewing , was conducted to include perspectives of AI platform stakeholders and collect primary data from various European countries.

Several challenges and barriers for AI platform stakeholders were identified alongside the corresponding best practices and guidelines on how to address them.

An effective approach was proposed to provide support to the industrial platform managers in this field, by developing guidelines and best practices on how a platform should build its services to support the ecosystem.

The purpose of this study is to determine the characteristics of the studies in terms of country, participant profile and methodology, as well as to determine what the Internet of Things (IoT) is currently contributing to higher education.

The study was developed following the methodology supported by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and the PICOS strategy, retrieving scientific literature from Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC and Google Scholar. Of the 237 studies that the search yielded, 11 were included.

The results showed that among the opportunities offered by IoT is that it not only brings the introduction of information and communication technology into the classroom, but also enhances student interest, thus, improving the quality of teaching in higher education. On the other hand, one of the challenges it faces is the attitude of teachers towards its adoption, as well as the level of digital competence of teachers.

This study presents how higher education institutions are including the IoT in their educational activities. The IoT refers to a network of digital interconnectivity between devices, people and the internet itself that enables the exchange of data between them, allowing key information about the use and performance of devices and objects to be captured to detect patterns, make recommendations, improve efficiency and create better user experiences.

Open-access repositories (OARs) are essential for openly disseminating intellectual knowledge on the internet and providing free access to it. The current study aims to evaluate the growth and development of OARs in the field of technology by investigating several characteristics such as coverage, OA policies, software type, content type, yearly growth, repository type and geographic contribution.

The directory of OARs acts as the source for data harvesting, which provides a quality-assured list of OARs across the globe.

The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was “research articles” and “electronic thesis and dissertations”.

The study is limited to the subject area technology as listed in OpenDOAR; therefore, the results may differ in other subject areas.

The work can benefit researchers across disciplines and, interested researchers can take this study as a base for evaluating online repositories. Moreover, policymakers and repository managers could also get benefitted from this study.

The study is the first of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to investigate the repositories of subject technology in the open-access platform.

The authors explore the impact of an emerging technology, blockchain technology, on diverse governance mechanisms and sustainable supply chain practices and how its relationships with the linkage of these elements.

The methodology incorporates a literature review and a qualitative empirical analysis of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) standards. Expert opinions from various firms and organizations within the electronics sector are assessed. Through a thematic analysis, the relationships are identified and examined.

Data immutability, transparency and traceability capabilities of blockchain technology enhance the relationship between environmental standards and ecological supply chain sustainability practices. Although immature, the blockchain can influence the governance of supply chain sustainability practices. Immaturity of technology, lack of expertise, sharing information and trust have delayed adoption.

There is limited empirical evidence regarding blockchain's impact on governance mechanisms, specifically hybrid public-private mechanisms and sustainable supply chain practices. The study further evaluates how particular blockchain features may exert varying influences on these aspects and different sustainable supply chain traits. As an exploratory study, it proposes new areas for further research, including how blockchain's traceability function can improve sustainability standard adoption. Additionally, there is a call for integrating blockchain with technologies like IoT and sensors which may influence supply chain governance mechanisms, standards and sustainability practices.