Italian Scientist Proposes New Direction of "Sustainable Robotics," Advocates Designing for the Full Lifecycle

According to IEEE Spectrum · Robotics, Barbara Mazzolai, deputy director of robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory, initially studied biology at the University of Pisa. In 1999, she joined the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, studying under biorobotics scholar Paolo Dario. She successively developed sensors and robots for monitoring air, water, and soil, and later shifted to biomimetic robotics. She and colleagues co-designed an octopus-inspired soft robot, demonstrating that robots can be soft while exerting considerable force on the environment like animals. She also used plant roots as a model; her team developed a miniature 3D printer placed at the robot's tip, which extrudes thermoplastic material through a heated nozzle, building a serpentine body behind it, thereby drilling into soil with less effort, while tip sensors can avoid obstacles and detect nearby nutrients or moisture. Now, Mazzolai is advocating a new research field she calls "sustainable robotics." In July, she and collaborators published a manifesto in Nature Machine Intelligence, outlining a new design approach to improve the relationship between nature, humans, and technology. This direction has three pillars: robots have minimal environmental impact; people of different socioeconomic backgrounds around the world can access them; and robots possess "symbiotic" attributes, benefiting both humans and nature. She hopes to incorporate the lifecycle concept into robot design, so that machines can be reused, recycled, or even biodegraded after their lifespan ends. She emphasizes that biomimicry is not copying natural organisms, because living things are both difficult to replicate and have different goals. She believes the elements to realize this vision are already in place and will attract young researchers who want to work for the future. This article's information comes from the original source IEEE Spectrum · Robotics related reporting, and was organized by AI.