Guest Editorial Focused Section on Mechatronics in Unmanned Systems

The papers in this special section focus on the use of mechatronics in unmanned systems. During the past few decades, unmanned systems have widely been applied in the environs of aerospace, ground, surface, and underwater. It is expected that unmanned systems will have more pervasive applications in industry, military, agriculture, logistics, etc.,when advanced mechatronic technologies are combined with complex systems engineering. Mechatronic design offers feasible solutions for unmanned systems to operate robustly and efficiently under diverse and difficult environmental conditions, but brings challenges for design, sensing, and control. Facing the growing application demands, this subject has drawn increasing attention in recent years. For this reason, the design, implementation, modeling, control, and optimization of unmanned systems have become urgent issues. This focused section aims to report the latest research results, both theoretical and application-oriented and to emphasize mechatronics in unmanned systems, including mechanism design and optimization of unmanned systems, modeling and control of unmanned systems, bioinspired mechatronics in unmanned systems, applications of mechatronic for unmanned systems, etc. Topics explored in this focused section include, but be not limited to, theoretical foundations for mechatronics in unmanned systems, mechatronics design of the unmanned systems, mechanism design, fabrication and optimization of unmanned systems, modeling, identification, sensing, and control of unmanned systems, mechatronics in unmanned space/aerial/ground/surface/underwater vehicles, bioinspired mechatronics in unmanned systems, and applications of mechatronics for unmanned systems in industry/ military/agriculture/logistics.