IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Challenges for Smart Worlds

Our world is rapidly changing, and swiftly evolving towards so-called “smart worlds”. The smart worlds starting with smart things such as the smart objects, smart city, smart manufacturing, and smart systems, will eventually encompass all aspects of the cyber, physical, social and mental world. A cyber-enabled completely new digital space featured with ubiquitous interconnections, integrations and interactions of physical, social, mental and other spaces will continuously bring out more and more changes. Cyberspace is actually the combinational outcome of various technologies including computers, communications, materials, intelligence and studies in perception, cognition, biology, sociology, etc., as well as advanced computing like the Internet/Web, pervasive networks, ubiquitous sensing and computing, the internet of things, the cloud, big data and so forth. These smart worlds are set to be the next important stage in human history. We have to be aware of the essential problems and crucial issues affecting in building truly smart worlds that benefit humanity, and simultaneously safeguard the natural environment for sustainable development and evolution. Therefore, this is the time to foresee future trends and identify what the grand challenges for smart worlds are. This Special Section in IEEE ACCESS has ten papers, and a brief summary about each paper is presented as follows.