When we look at the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it is clear that robots have a big role to play in advancing the SDGs. However, Sustainable Robotss is more than just an application. For every application where robots can improve sustainability, we also need to address the question of what additional costs or benefits are there across the supply chain. What are the ‘externalities’ or additional costs/benefits of using robots to solve the problem? Does using robots reduce or increase:
- Electricity Cost
- Production cost
- Labor costs
- Supply Chain Costs
- Supply Chain Mileage
- Consumption of raw materials
- And the selection of raw materials
Solving our global economic and environmental challenges must not involve adding to existing problems or creating new ones. Therefore, it is important to address all levels at which robotics can have an impact, beyond the primary way in which robotics can address the global sustainable development goals.
Just as the five levels of autonomy helped define the stages of autonomous mobility, this article proposes five levels of sustainability to frame the discussion.
Level 1: Robots for conventional recycling
Level 1 of sustainable roboticss is simply making existing processes for sustainability more efficient, cheaper, and more distributed. It makes recycling better. Companies that are great examples include: AMP Robotics, Recycleye, MachineEx, Pellenc ST, Greyparrot, Everlast Labs, and Fanuc. Here is an explanation video from Fanuc.
“With AI, with robotic arms, we’ve seen factories recover 10, 20, 30 percent more than they were before,” said JD Ambati, CEO of EverestLabs. “They were losing millions of dollars to landfills, and with AI, they were able to figure out the value of that loss and deploy robotic arms to capture it.”
Some other examples at Level 1 include using robots to better monitor aquaculture, or using robots to clean or install solar farms and wind turbines. If robotics improves existing recycling practices, then that is Level 1 of sustainable robotics.
Level 2: Robots that enable new recycling
Level 2 of Sustainable Robotics This is where robotics recycles new materials and creates new industrial applications. A great example of this is Urban Machines, which reclaims wood from construction sites and turns it back into usable materials, something that was previously too difficult to do on any scale.
Construction using on-site materials and robotics, such as 3D printing, is another example, as seen in the NASA Habitat Challenge sponsored by Caterpillar, Bechtel, and Brick & Mortar Ventures.
Other examples include robots that go into oceans and lakes to collect trash, such as Ran Marine’s Waste Shark, River Cleaning, and Quebec company Searial Cleaners, which has deployed robots to clean up the Great Lakes plastic, helping remove 74,000 pieces of plastic from four lakes since 2020.
Searial Cleaners is working to use the BeBot and PixieDrone as cleaning tools for beaches, marinas, and golf courses, with the BeBot providing ample space for the company’s branding. The device was born to leverage new technologies for trash in the mission of the Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup (GLPC). The program also uses other devices, including the Seabin, which sits in the water and sucks up trash, and the Enviropod LittaTrap filter for storm drains.
If there is a completely new way to practice recycling using robotics, then that is level 2 sustainable robotics.
Step 3: Robots that electrify everything
One of the biggest sustainability changes enabled by robotics is the shift from fossil fuel-powered transportation, logistics, and agricultural machinery to battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology. In addition to dramatically reducing emissions, the increased use of smaller, autonomous electric vehicles on the first, last, and intermediate miles could change the total number of trips, reducing the need for partially loaded, larger vehicles to make longer trips.
Monarch Tractor’s MK-V is the world’s first electric tractor that can drive or operate autonomously, giving farmers greater flexibility as a ‘driver-optional’ option. Of course, greater use of computer vision and AI in all agricultural robots will reduce the need for chemical solutions, enabling precision or regenerative agriculture, increasing sustainability. Technically, these improvements to agricultural practices are Level 2 in sustainable robotics.
However, small, fully autonomous agricultural robots like Meropy, Burro.ai, SwarmFarm, Muddy Machines, and Small Robot Company are reducing the size and soil compaction associated with agricultural machinery, allowing machines to manage smaller farms. 
This is the third step to sustainable robotics.
Level 4: Robot
The higher the level of sustainability, the deeper we go into the actual design and construction of the robotic system. Switching from fossil fuels to electricity is a small step. Switching to locally sourced or produced materials is another step. Switching to recyclable materials is another step toward fully sustainable robotics.
OmniLabs uses 3D printing to build robots, exporting them to 47 countries while also manufacturing them locally in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, Cornell researchers Wendy Zhu and Ilan Mandel have introduced the phrase “Garbatrage” to describe the opportunity to prototype or build robots using recycled parts from other consumer electronics, such as hoverboards.
“Given sustainability concerns and the global supply shortages and international trade issues of the past few years, the time is ripe to implement practices such as waste management,” the researchers said. 
This is a great example of level 4 sustainable robotics.
Level 5: Self-driving/repair robots
Self-driving, self-repairing, or self-recycling robots are Level 5 of sustainable robotics. Researchers have solutions like the MilliMobile, a battery-free autonomous robot that can run on harvested solar and RF power. Developed at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the MilliMobile is the size of a penny and can navigate itself, sense its surroundings, and communicate wirelessly using energy harvested from light and radio waves.
But it’s not just research. In the past two years, several solar-powered agricultural robots have come onto the market. Solinftec has a solar-powered spraying robot, and there’s also EcoRobotix and AIGEN, which are also wind-powered.
Modular robotics will make robotics multi-purpose instead of requiring multiple specialized robots, reducing material waste and energy demand. Meanwhile, self-driving and self-repair technologies will allow robots to enter previously inaccessible areas, including outer planets, and eliminate dependence on the grid. Product life cycles will be extended as robots integrate self-repair materials. This is Level 5 of sustainable robotics.
And in the future?
While you wait for the future, here are some resources to help you transition your entire company into a sustainable robotics company: ITA’s Sustainable Manufacturing 101, the International Trade Administration, and the OECD’s Sustainable Manufacturing Toolkit.
References
- https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/08/everestlabs-using-robotic-arms-and-ai-to-make-recycling-more-efficient.html
- https://www.greenbiz.com/article/great-lakes-are-awash-plastic-can-robots-and-drones-help
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https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/02/06/using-artificial-intelligence-agricultural-robots-are-on-the-rise
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https://www.wired.co.uk/article/farming-robots-small-robot-company-tractors
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https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2023/09/garbatrage-spins-e-waste-prototyping-gold
Andra Kay is the Executive Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, Founder of Women in Robotics, and a mentor, investor, and advisor to startups, accelerators, and think tanks with a keen interest in commercializing socially positive robotics and AI.
Andra Kay is the Executive Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, Founder of Women in Robotics, and a mentor, investor, and advisor to startups, accelerators, and think tanks with a keen interest in commercializing socially positive robotics and AI.
