Target object detection and identification are among the primary uses for a remote sensing system. This is crucial in several fields, including environmental and urban monitoring, hazard and disaster management, and defense and military. In recent years, these analyses have used the tremendous amount of data acquired by sensors mounted on satellite, airborne, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms. This book promotes papers exploiting different remote sensing data for target object detection and identification, such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and multispectral and hyperspectral imaging. Several cutting-edge contributions, which provide examples of how to select of a technology or another depending on the specific application, will be detailed.

Target object detection and identification are among the primary uses for a remote sensing system. This is crucial in several fields, including environmental and urban monitoring, hazard and disaster management, and defense and military. In recent years, these analyses have used the tremendous amount of data acquired by sensors mounted on satellite, airborne, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms. This book promotes papers exploiting different remote sensing data for target object detection and identification, such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and multispectral and hyperspectral imaging. Several cutting-edge contributions, which provide examples of how to select of a technology or another depending on the specific application, will be detailed.

The articles belonging to this Special Issue provide a comprehensive overview of the advancements, challenges, and future trends in object detection and tracking, with a particular emphasis on remote sensing applications. They discuss a wide range of topics, including different types of targets (e.g., ships, small targets), imaging modalities (e.g., optical, SAR, infrared), image processing techniques, and deep learning algorithms. In the first group of articles, different aspects of ship detection in remote sensing images, including challenges, advancements, and datasets, are discussed. These sources specifically focus on ship detection in SAR images, which poses unique challenges due to the presence of speckle noise and the need for robust algorithms that can handle different ship sizes and orientations. The second group addresses the problem of detecting small targets in infrared images, which is a complex task due to the small size of the targets, low contrast with the background, and the presence of noise and clutter. The third group focuses on target tracking in image sequences, which involves estimating the trajectory of a target over time.

The merging of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things is known as Artificial Intelligence-of-Things (AIoT). IoT consists of interlinked computing devices and machines which can acquire, transfer, and execute field/industrial operations without human involvement, while AI processes the acquired data and helps extract the required information. The technologies work in synergy: AI enriches IoT through machine learning and deep learning-based data analysis and learning capabilities, whereas IoT enriches AI through data acquisition, connectivity, and data exchange. Precision agriculture is becoming critically important for sustainable food production to meet the growing food demand. In recent decades, AI and IoT techniques have played an increasing role within industrial operations (e.g. autonomous manufacturing, automated supply chain management, predictive maintenance, smart energy grids, smart home appliances, and wearables), however, agricultural field operations are still heavily dependent on human labor. This is because these operations are ill-defined, unstructured, and susceptible to variation in natural conditions (e.g. illumination, landscape, atmosphere) plus the biological nature of crops (fruits, stems, leaves, and/or shoots continuously change their shape and/or color as they grow).

The 13-volume set LNCS 14425-14437 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th Chinese Conference on Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision, PRCV 2023, held in Xiamen, China, during October 13–15, 2023. The 532 full papers presented in these volumes were selected from 1420 submissions. The papers have been organized in the following topical sections: Action Recognition, Multi-Modal Information Processing, 3D Vision and Reconstruction, Character Recognition, Fundamental Theory of Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Vision Problems in Robotics, Autonomous Driving, Pattern Classification and Cluster Analysis, Performance Evaluation and Benchmarks, Remote Sensing Image Interpretation, Biometric Recognition, Face Recognition and Pose Recognition, Structural Pattern Recognition, Computational Photography, Sensing and Display Technology, Video Analysis and Understanding, Vision Applications and Systems, Document Analysis and Recognition, Feature Extraction and Feature Selection, Multimedia Analysis and Reasoning, Optimization and Learning methods, Neural Network and Deep Learning, Low-Level Vision and Image Processing, Object Detection, Tracking and Identification, Medical Image Processing and Analysis