Leveraging Modularity to Advance UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Case Study of Modular Edge AI, Robotics and Digital Twin

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) highlight the urgent global challenges communities face. Most countries are not on track to meet the UN SDG goals. The goals require alignment between complex social, environmental, political, economic, and technological systems. From a technological perspective, numerous opportunities exist; however, few are scaling. It is hypothesised that this is due to the often high capital and operational costs associated with Industry 4.0. This paper proposes a collaborative technology System of Systems that supports UN SDGs through software, hardware, and human technology. This paper identifies potential opportunities and demonstrates the application of edge AI and robotics modularity through student project-based use cases to support equality (goal 10), sustainable cities and communities (goal 11), responsible consumption and production (goal 12), life below water (goal 14), and life on land (goal 15). The results indicate the potential of the modular integration of technology and support system ecosystems to address adoption challenges associated with utilisation, and advanced Industry 4.0 capability retention to lower holistic Life Cycle Costs (LCC). Future research will focus on identifying global stakeholders, needs analysis, a concept of operations, and the human and technology architecture required to initiate a collaborative technology System of Systems in support of the UN SDGs.