Cutting-Edge of RFID: Guest Editorial on Augmented RFID Sensing and Robot Navigation Systems

The year 2023 was extremely fruitful for RFID community as it offered a diverse range of perspectives, methodologies, and findings, among all the spectrum of RFID communications and systems. In this context, the IEEE JOURNAL OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION took the opportunity to gather new florid research contributions in the field of RFID technology in two special issues devoted to hot and cutting-edge research topics: "Augmented RFID sensing systems for environment, healthcare and safety" and "RFID Sensor Fusion for Navigation of Robots and Vehicles". Sensing capabilities and location-awareness, especially focused to the development of autonomous robots, represent two vital applications for the development of next-generation industrial systems, technologies that serve people and communities. In Fig. 1 it is depicted the output of an online search on the IEEE XPLORE database by selecting only papers published in journals (journals + magazines + early access) from 2015 to 2022, with focus on "RFID Sensing" (blue bars) and "RFID localization" (red bars). There is a clear trend of growth in recent years, which highlights the topicality of the journal proposed special issues in selecting themes of interest to the community. Furthermore, the special issue aimed to emphasize the requirements of industries associated with these systems and to encourage research towards exploring innovative solutions for commercial applications. The articles featured in this special issue offer a diverse range of perspectives, methodologies, and findings, also highlighting the multidisciplinary nature of RFID.