From robot-animal interaction new solutions to tackle the climate and environmental crisis

The interaction between robots and animals can offer innovative solutions to the climate and environmental crisis. This is the thesis proposed by two European scientists, Thomas Schmickl, professor at the University of Graz, and Donato Romano, researcher at the Institute of BioRobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, in an article published in the journal Science Robotics.
It is no longer the time to control and challenge nature: in order to respond to climate change, the loss of biodiversity and all the environmental emergencies that are gripping the planet, scientific research must develop new solutions capable of integrating biology and technology.

"The goal is to develop symbioses between living organisms and machines that can generate emerging collective properties useful for understanding biological complexity, promote sustainable environmental management, inspire solutions in engineering, and provide support in extreme environments" says Donato Romano.

The collaboration between robots and animals to save the planet

In the article published in Science Robotics, Schmickl and Romano collected the most relevant examples of new animal-robot interaction systems developed in recent years. The great advantage of robot-animal interaction is to create systems that exploit the natural behaviour of animals and the technological capabilities of robots to tackle complex problems. Robots can collaborate with animal species to monitor and protect ecosystems, support biodiversity and improve ecological resilience. By collaborating, animals and robots are able to perform tasks that neither would be capable of on their own, such as restoring habitats, controlling invasive species or collecting real-time environmental data in a non-invasive manner. These synergies can also help manage natural resources sustainably and mitigate the negative effects of human activities on ecosystems.

The research activity of the BioRobotic Ecosystems Lab

Donato Romano is the scientific head of the BioRobotic Ecosystems Lab, a research laboratory of the Institute of BioRobotics, whose goal is to develop new robot-animal interaction solutions to monitor, protect and manage ecosystems, addressing ecological challenges in an innovative way.

Its projects include the interaction between bees and robot hives conducted in the European project ‘SensorBees’ for the development of robotic beehives capable of supporting ecosystem stability and pollinator protection; social learning in insects that can use social information provided by biomimetic robots to produce specific behavioural responses environmental monitoring with biological sensors that has enabled the development of a collaborative system between some domestic crickets, the Acheta domesticus, and artificial intelligence; the development of a biohybrid system for aquatic monitoring in response to environmental changes, pollution and global warming.

Science Robotics

Thomas Schmickl, Donato Romano, Robots and animals teaming up in the wild to tackle ecosystem challenges, Science Robotics, nov 2024