Topic Issue Information

With the rapid development of autonomous systems, robotic networks, cyber-physical systems, and intelligent sensing and communication technologies, networked systems are becoming increasingly distributed, interconnected, and intelligent. By exchanging information among interconnected nodes or agents, these systems are capable of distributed sensing, information processing, decision-making, and coordinated operation, providing enhanced flexibility, scalability, and autonomy for complex engineering applications.

A fundamental challenge in intelligent networked systems is that individual nodes or agents typically have access only to partial and local information. Limited sensing capabilities, communication constraints, system uncertainties, disturbances, and dynamic network environments further complicate the acquisition and utilization of global information. Distributed observation provides an effective framework for reconstructing unavailable states, reference signals, and other essential information through local measurements and interactions among neighboring nodes, thereby providing an important foundation for distributed decision-making and coordination.

Beyond information acquisition, effective coordination is essential for networked systems to achieve collective objectives. Recent developments in distributed control, optimization, data-driven methods, and learning-based techniques have provided new opportunities for improving the autonomy, adaptability, and robustness of networked systems. The integration of distributed observation with advanced coordination mechanisms is therefore of growing importance for enabling intelligent networked systems to operate reliably under limited information, communication constraints, and complex environmental conditions.

This Topic Issue aims to bring together recent theoretical, methodological, and application-oriented advances in distributed observation and coordination of intelligent networked systems. Particular attention is given to new approaches for distributed information acquisition, cooperative decision-making, and coordinated operation under limited sensing and communication. Both model-based and data-driven approaches are encouraged, together with their applications to emerging autonomous and networked systems.

This Topic Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Distributed observation, estimation, and information fusion for intelligent networked systems
• Intelligent decision-making and cooperative control in networked systems
• Learning-based and data-driven distributed observation and coordination
• Distributed perception, planning, and coordination in intelligent networked systems
• Adaptive observation and coordination under communication constraints and uncertainties
• Intelligent networked autonomous systems and multi-robot applications

Academic Editors

	Mingkang Long Email: mingkang.long@ntu.edu.sg Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
	Xiaoling Wang Email: xiaolingwang@njupt.edu.cn Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
	Suoxia Miao Email: suoxiamiao1215@163.com Jiangxi University of Water Resources and Electric Power, China
	Ruochen Tai Email: ruochen_tai@hust.edu.cn Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
	Han Wu Email: wuhan@wust.edu.cn Wuhan University of Science and Technology, China
	Housheng Su Email: houshengsu@gmail.com Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

All manuscripts will undergo peer review in accordance with the journal’s established policies and procedures. Final acceptance will be based on the peer-review reports and the evaluation of the Academic Editors and the Editor-in-Chief. Decisions will be made by the Editor-in-Chief or Academic Editors who have no conflicts of interest with any of the authors.