The euRobotics Topic Group on Robotics for Sustainability had their first kick-off meeting on September 13, 2021. The meeting focused on common interests and motivations of establishing the Topic Group.
We need to explore what the role of the robotics community is for sustainability.
The participants discussed that the Topic Group needs to help explore what the role of the robotics community is for sustainability. Also, the robotics community should get useful takeaways from the work of the group e.g. best practices, success stories, guidelines or input for proposals.
It was agreed that there are essentially two aspects of sustainability that should be the focus of the activities:
What and where can robotics make an impact (application areas)?
The manufacturing of robots themselves: how can robotics developers/ robotics companies make sure their robot production will be done in a sustainable way?
Other interesting areas related to these topics are:
How can companies implementing robotics track the sustainability aspects of the robot they use (e.g. what is the ecological footprint of whole robotics system)
Business challenges: what are sustainable business models for industries?
Next steps
The Topic Group has submitted proposals for two workshops at the European Robotics Forum 2022:
Focus on defining the nomenclature in sustainability: The economic, societal and environmental aspects; sustainable robots and sustainable robotic deployment in production/application scenarios - the effective tradeoff.
Focus on application areas of robotics in sustainability: Are robotics a solution or a problem to Sustainability; HRC applications for sustainability - ongoing EU Projects.
Commentaires