Robotics and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Researcher: Vincent Mai, Algora Lab
Partners: FARI and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which identifies 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These range from No Poverty to Life on Land, to Gender Equality and Good Health and Wellbeing. A complete set of targets to achieve, for the sustainability of societies and the respect of human rights on a planetary scale.
The development and deployment of robotics will transform society and play an important role in achieving these goals, because robotics is a field of artificial intelligence where concrete and physical actions are taken in the world. The impacts of robotics will therefore be multiple and on a large scale, in the world of work, the environment, health, and even in education.
How to assess the impacts, direct and indirect of robotics? What opportunities does robotics open to the SDGs, and what are the best design practices to achieve them? How to minimize the negative impacts of robotic applications? What is the role of public authorities in the regulation, but also the support and use of these technologies?
These questions and many more are asked in the Robotics and SDGs project. In collaboration with several international researchers, from FARI in Brussels and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, in India, we organize conferences and workshops bringing together multidisciplinary experts.
Click below to view our publications:
– https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9740074
Finally, we are currently building the Sustainable Robotics site, with the aim of bringing together a community of actors intended to work on this important subject (project in progress).