バイオインスパイアードロボティクスの先駆者が「サステナビリティロボティクス」分野を提唱、よりグリーンな地球設計へ

Reported by IEEE Spectrum on 2026-09-22. Summarized and analyzed by XAIPART Editorial.

What happened

Barbara Mazzolai, associate director for robotics and director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, is calling for a new research field she terms "sustainability robotics." ^S1 The vision was laid out in a manifesto published in Nature Machine Intelligence in July, co-written with collaborators, and frames sustainability as a core component of robot design rather than an afterthought. ^S1

The framework rests on three pillars: minimizing environmental impact, ensuring access to people across socioeconomic backgrounds, and designing "symbiotic" systems that benefit both humans and nature. ^S1 In practice, Mazzolai wants lifecycle thinking embedded upstream, so robots can be reused, recycled, or biodegraded at end of life. ^S1 "We need to reduce the footprint of our technology," she told IEEE Spectrum. ^S1

The proposal builds on Mazzolai's track record in bioinspired robotics. Her lab has produced soft robots modeled on octopus arms, plant-root explorers built around a tip-mounted 3D printer that extrudes thermoplastic filament to push through soil, and biodegradable seed-shaped robots that change shape in response to humidity. ^S1 A tendril-like vine-climbing robot is shown in the article as an example of plant-inspired design. ^S1 Earlier in her career she helped establish soft robotics as a paradigm by demonstrating that soft-bodied machines could still exert strong force on the environment. ^S1

Mazzolai also argues that conventional robots typically carry perception sensors (tactile, proprioceptive) but rarely integrate physical or chemical sensors for understanding the environment they move through, a gap she frames as part of the new design agenda. ^S1

Corrections: none at publication. This brief will be updated with a timestamp if the source corrects its report.