Environmental Intelligence and Ecorobotics: Toward Environmental Sustainability

Environmental intelligence brings together synergies among environmental science, advanced sensor research, data science, robotics, and artificial intelligence to enable a better understanding of the natural environment and effective coordination of the responses to the associated challenges. Environmental intelligence is a particularly relevant application field for the new trend of ecorobotics research, in which robots are envisioned as environmentally responsible, energy-efficient, bioinspired machines capable of adapting and safely interacting within natural ecosystems. By incorporating an ecological approach to robot design, innovative fabrication technologies, biodegradable materials, distributed architectures for sensing and intelligence, new power sources, and energy-harvesting solutions, ecorobots offer practical solutions for in-depth analysis of natural processes. This increases environmental knowledge and supports sustainable strategies to safeguard the environment. This article reviews the field of environmental intelligence with a focus on the roles, features, and abilities of ecorobots and provides future perspectives toward environmental sustainability.