Sustainable Robotics – Translating the UN Sustainable Development Goals to our Domain

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Robots are increasingly becoming integrated to our lives, with rising expectations for robotic technologies to address current and future global challenges. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identify these major challenges across the economic, societal and environmental domains. This work presents the excerpts of a systematic, consensus-based expert elicitation process, incorporating a multidisciplinary analysis of the roles that robotics can play in achieving the SDGs. Each of the 17 main Goals and 169 targets were reviewed individually in the context of contemporary robotics, assessing documented solutions in the scientific literature. An international group of experts evaluated the quality of evidence and the significance of enabling and inhibiting impacts, aligning these findings with the targets. The results indicate that robotics has the potential to enable 46% of the targets, particularly those related to industry and environmental SDGs. Conversely, robotics could inhibit 19% of the SDG targets, primarily by exacerbating inequalities and creating tensions between the SDGs. The primary goal of this work is to raise awareness within the robotics research and development community about their responsibility to address these targets collaboratively.

40th Anniversary of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2024

Publication! Robotics: Enabler and inhibitor of the Sustainable Development Goals

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Robotics has the power to help our society in managing many current and foreseeable challenges, and contribute to a responsible future, as formally structured in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative. Prior work has already investigated the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the SDGs, using a systematic consensus-based expert elicitation process. However, the existing literature has not focused on the intricacies of robotics and the unique dynamics this domain presents regarding the SDGs. In this vein, this work adapts an established approach, to focus on and dive deeper into the field of robotics and social responsibility. We introduce a multidisciplinary analysis of both the enabling and disabling roles of robotics, in achieving the SDG-presented, major economic, social and environmental priorities. The United Nation’s 17 SDG and the 169 Targets, were individually examined within the context of state-of-the-art robotics already documented in scientific literature. The significance and the quality-of-evidence of enabling/inhibiting impacts, were assessed by an international panel of experts, to quantify the positive or negative effect of the applied robotic systems. Results from this study indicate that robotics has the potential to enable 46 % of the Targets, particularly for the industry and environment-related SDGs, forecasting a huge impact on our production systems and thus on our entire society. Inversely, robotics could inhibit 19 % of the SDG Targets, mainly through exacerbation of inequalities and tensions in the SDGs. The objective of this paper is to assess and grade the current impact of the robotics megatrend on the SDGs, provide comparable data, and encourage the robotics community to work on these targets, in a unified way and eventually improve the quality of the related outcomes.

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Sustainability has become a critical challenge in Society and the field of AI and Robotics will not remain unaffected. From environmental to social or economic impacts, roboticists, entrepreneurs, researchers and public authorities are increasingly confronted with the topic. What is Sustainability? Where does AI and Robotics stand in that regard? What can organizations do to integrate Sustainability in their projects? What are the existing tools, frameworks at our disposal today? Are there initiatives and lessons learnt in other fields that could help AI and Robotics? Several reports, publications and events have shown a growing interest in the community to be more proactive. But where to start? How to avoid greenwashing? All these questions (among others) will be addressed in our 2023 online series of 5 webinars. This series is open to all actors of AI and Robotics: from industry, academia and beyond. Its goal is to raise the community’s awareness of Sustainability, spark discussions, exchange experiences and provide free introductory training with concrete use-cases. The webinar series will aim at having a balanced representation of academic and private organizations, sharing their knowledge. During each session, participants will be encouraged to share their experiences, needs, questions, and practical suggestions. Our goal? Identifying key priority actions to reinforce Sustainability in Robotics and AI. This event is co-organized by a consortium of researchers, industrial stakeholders and experts. Partner organizations: FARI – AI for the Common Good Institute Sustainable Robotics euRobotics Topic Group on Sustainability Profactor CLAIRE