IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2022 - 4

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
Humans and the Environment
By Yi Guo
T
he COVID-19 pandemic has
changed a lot of things, one
of which is human behavior.
For me, I found a new hobby
of hiking during the first year of the
pandemic. I hiked in dozens of state
parks around me during the fall and
winter se a -
sons, some of
which I did
not even know
existed before
the pandemic.
I felt relieved
both physically
and mentall
y a ft er t he
weekend hiking
trips, and
it was helpful
for me to reduce the Zoom fatigue
built up during work days.
Nature creates the environment that
we live in. Environmental damage can
lead to new diseases. Nearly two-thirds
of the hundreds of diseases that emerged
in the past century were transmitted
from animals to humans, including
HIV/AIDS and probably COVID-19.
Scientists also found a correlation
between the loss of forests in Africa and
the outbreaks of Ebola. Altering land use
threatens biodiversity, and deforestation
and intensive farming are linked to outbreaks
of transmitted diseases. Also, scientists
have studied how people have
altered living organisms and exerted an
evolutionary pressure on other species.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2022.3213198
Date of current version: 2 December 2022
We need to nurture the environment
we live in and
avoid environmental damage
that essentially endangers
human health.
The role nature plays in
concepts involve principles
found in nature for creating
robot locomotive capabilities;
multirobotic systems
study how animal swarms
communicate and exchange
We need more and
more innovative
robots to join
humans' effort
to protect the
environment.
human welfare and economic
activity has been overlooked. Complex
natural systems can flip from one equilibrium
to another when under pressure.
The demands humans currently
place on nature may not be sustainable
by Earth's ecosystem. Natural capital
was recently included in an analysis of
the sustainability of current rates of
economic growth. As we learn more
through interaction with nature, it is
necessary to be aware of the sustainability
of the ecosystem around us and
pay attention to the impact of human
behavior and what new technology will
impose on the environment.
Robots can help protect the environment
by adding monitoring capabilities
in extreme conditions, such as robotic
vehicles for supply transport, under-ice
exploration to support climate change
studies in the Arctic, and surface and
underwater robots to monitor chemical
and oil pollution. Robotics can also
help fight climate change by reducing
carbon emissions through renewable
energy resources, helping crops survive
droughts, and planting trees. We need
more and more innovative robots to
join humans' effort to protect the environment.
We have no choice.
Bioinspired robotics is a field of
robotics that studies biological systems
to achieve engineering goals. Among
the well-studied topics, locomotion
4 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * DECEMBER 2022
information and the hierarchical
and territorial structure of animal societies;
and robotics learning draws inspiration
from human learning and neural
network-based brain cognition capability.
The field of soft robotics stems from
bioinspired concepts and research on
deformable structures, soft materials,
and morphological computation. While
bioinspired robotics is a very broad
research area, challenges exist in many
frontiers, including the integration of science
and technology advances toward
enhanced robotics capability in perception,
cognition, learning, and control.
This December issue is a special issue
(SI) on biomimetic perception, cognition,
and control: " From Nature to
Robots. " We received more than 30 submissions
to this themed issue, which is
the highest number of SI submission in
the past two years. I'd like to thank the
lead guest editor, Dr. Chenguang Yang,
and his team, Dr. Shan Luo, Dr. Nathan
Lepora, Dr. Fanny Ficuciello, Dr. Dongheui
Lee, Dr. Weiwei Wan, and Dr.
Chun-Yi Su, for their hard work managing
the peer review process within the
constrained time frame of this SI. I'd also
like to thank the assisting IEEE Robotics
and Automation Magazine associate editor,
Surya Nurzaman, for his help on the
SI. I hope you find inspiration from the
feature articles. Enjoy reading!
https://www.orcid.org/0000-0002-7158-351X
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2022

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