This paper presents a review and critical analysis on the modeling of the dynamics of vehicular traffic, human crowds and swarms seen as living and, hence, complex systems.
It contains a survey of the kinetic models developed in the last ten years on the aforementioned topics so that overlapping with previous reviews can be avoided. Although the main focus of this paper lies on the mesoscopic models for collective dynamics, we provide a brief overview on the corresponding micro and macroscopic models, and discuss intermediate role of mesoscopic model between them. Moreover, we provide a number of selected challenging research perspectives for readers' attention.