Reimagining robotics for sustainability

EPFL researchers Aude Billard and Mirko Kovač argue that robotics must evolve beyond raw technical performance to account for environmental, social, and economic impact. Kovač's manifesto in Nature Machine Intelligence proposes a new discipline called Sustainability Robotics, built on three principles: minimally invasive, universally accessible, and symbiotic design. Examples from EPFL labs illustrate the concept in practice, including the eel-inspired Envirobot for water quality monitoring, an edible fish-food-based aquatic robot for environmental sensing, the RoboFood initiative exploring edible robots for food and medicine delivery, adaptive robotic construction using reclaimed materials, and the PAWS quadruped that runs using passive mechanics instead of motors. The authors frame sustainability trade-offs not as something to eliminate but to make visible and account for when judging a robot's overall value.

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