In the last twenty years, there has been significant progress in the design of rotating machinery equipped with smart components and embedded functions. This was accompanied by developments in actuators, sensors and power electronics technologies, advances in data acquisition and signal processing, as well as developments in control theory. This paper will provide a brief overview of the current state of art and it will illustrate examples of the applications of smart technologies applied to rotating machines. Several technologies, either most recently developed or under development will be presented, which involve active control and are relevant to smart solutions applied to rotating machinery.