Barbara Mazzolai, Associate Director of Robotics and Head of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, advocates a new research field called 'sustainable robotics.' The aim of the approach – to improve the relationships between nature, humanity, and technology. In a manifesto published in July in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, Mazzolai and her colleagues outlined a vision of designing robots that place sustainability at the center of development. 'We need to reduce the footprint of our technology,' – she says. 'It's really about thinking differently, opening up new opportunities for robotics and for society.' Mazzolai's path to science began with her childhood on the Tuscan coast near the port city of Livorno. Her father was a state health inspector and a professional mycologist; the family often explored forests and studied local mushrooms and plants. Although Mazzolai initially considered a career as an artist, in 1987 she enrolled at the University of Pisa to study biology, particularly drawn to marine biology. By 1995, she had earned a master's degree in biology. Shortly thereafter, even before completing her education, she took a position as a research fellow at the Institute of Biophysics of the Italian National Research Council, where she studied the cycles of heavy metals, such as mercury, through the living and non-living parts of the environment. This involved collecting and analyzing samples from water, soil, vegetables, and even human organisms to understand the impact of these metals on health and the environment. Alongside her research work, Mazzolai obtained another master's degree in 1998 in eco-management and audit schemes at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa. In 1999, she learned that the university was recruiting biologists to develop new environmental monitoring devices. Mazzolai applied and began working as a research assistant under the renowned bioroboticist Paolo Dario, initially developing sensors, then robots for monitoring air, water, and soil. Even before starting her doctoral program, she was promoted to assistant professor in 2004 and soon made her first foray into bioinspired robotics. In collaboration with colleagues from Sant'Anna, she helped develop a soft robot inspired by an octopus. 'We proposed it as a paradigm for developing the idea of soft robotics: to demonstrate that robots can be soft yet apply strong force to the environment, like an animal,' – she recalls.
In 2007, Mazzolai entered a doctoral program in microsystems engineering at the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, combining her studies with work at Sant'Anna. She was already actively using microfabrication techniques to develop sensors for her robots and wanted to advance this part of the field. Although robots are often equipped with perception sensors, such as tactile or proprioceptive sensors, these systems usually focus on understanding the robot's position in the environment. 'However, there are few robots that integrate physical or chemical sensors for a real understanding of the environment they move in,' – notes Mazzolai. In 2009, she was appointed team leader at the Center for Micro-Biorobotics of the Italian Institute of Technology, where she continued her work in the emerging field of bioinspired robotics. Two years later, she completed her doctoral dissertation and was promoted to director of the center. Around the same time, Mazzolai became interested in using plants as models for new types of robots, expanding bioinspiration beyond animals. She was particularly attracted to the ability of roots to effectively explore the underground environment, and she envisioned machines with similar agility that could be applied in environmental modeling and precision agriculture. When she first proposed the idea, colleagues were somewhat skeptical about robots based on seemingly static organisms. But in reality, Mazzolai says, plants are constantly moving through a process known as indeterminate growth. 'They really grow throughout their lives,' – she explains. 'They adapt their morphology, their behavior to the external environment; they regenerate, they sense, they communicate.'
Attempting to mimic a system operating on principles so different from conventional robotics required serious thought. Mazzolai says that working in bioinspired robotics sometimes requires having 'two separate brains' – one of a biologist and one of an engineer. The process often involves deeply studying the target organism to understand the underlying principles that shape its functioning before attempting to create a robot capable of mimicking them. 'It's not a copy of natural organisms,' – Mazzolai emphasizes, because a living organism is both complex to reproduce and pursues different goals. In the case of plant roots, what makes them so effective at exploring soil – is that they reduce friction by growing only at the very thin tip of the structure, while the thicker base of the root remains stationary. This significantly reduces the amount of energy needed to push through the ground compared to a conventional drill, which must push the entire structure from above. To embody this principle in a robot, her team developed a miniaturized 3D printer located at the tip of the machine, which feeds thermoplastic filament through a heated nozzle to build a snake-like body behind it. This allows the robot to effectively push through the soil. The tip also contains sensors that enable it to avoid obstacles and detect nearby nutrients or water. After a career of drawing inspiration from nature, Mazzolai now seeks to give back. Many modern technologies, including plastics and car batteries, were developed with little thought about how they would impact the environment at the end of their life cycle, she says. Mazzolai wants to ensure that robotics does not follow the same path. This is the inspiration for what she and her colleagues now call 'sustainable robotics.' The approach has three central pillars: ensuring minimal environmental impact of robots; their accessibility to people from different countries and all socio-economic backgrounds; and their 'symbiosis,' providing benefits to both people and nature. More specifically, Mazzolai would like to incorporate the concept of the life cycle into the design of robots so that at the end of their useful life, these machines can be reused, recycled, or even biodegraded. While this may sound ambitious, she is confident that all the ingredients to make it a reality are already in place. And it's a vision she is sure will inspire future roboticists. 'There are young people who really want to work in this field because it's the future, their future,' – she says. Facing the threat of ongoing environmental damage, 'they want to develop something that can help.'
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