IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2022 - 92

INDUSTRY ACTIVITIES
The Role of Robotics in Achieving the
United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals-The Experts' Meeting at the 2021
IEEE/RSJ IROS Workshop
By Vincent Mai, Bram Vanderborght, Tamás Haidegger, Alaa Khamis, Niraj Bhargava, Dominik B.O. Boesl, Katleen Gabriels, An Jacobs,
AJung Moon, Robin Murphy, Yasushi Nakauchi, Edson Prestes, Bhavani Rao R., Ricardo Vinuesa, and Carl-Maria Mörch
T
he development and deployment
of robotic technologies
can have an important role in
efforts to achieve the United
Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs)-with both enabling and
inhibiting impacts. During a workshop
at the 2021 IEEE/Robotics Society of
Japan International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS
2021), experts from various disciplines
analyzed the role of robotics in
achieving the SDGs. This article
provides a summary of the most
important outcomes of the workshop.
During the workshop panels, the variety
of roles that robots can play in enabling
the SDGs was underlined. The panelists
discussed the challenges to the adoption
of robots and to their deployment at
their full potential. The probable
undesirable effects of robots were also
considered, and the panelists suggested
approaches to correctly design SDGrelevant
robotic solutions. Governance
frameworks were also discussed, with
respect to their contents as well as the
challenges to build them. The role of
military funding was briefly analyzed.
Finally, several proposals for actions
and policies were made. The contents of
the workshop, including contributing
papers and videos from the panelists, as
well as additional information about
future initiatives regarding robotics
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2022.3143409
Date of current version: 22 March 2022
92 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * MARCH 2022
and the SDGs, are available at www.
sustainablerobotics.org.
Introduction
In 2015, the 193 countries of the UN
General Assembly adopted the 17 SDGs
as a part of the 2030 Agenda [1], [2].
These objectives seek to eradicate poverty,
strengthen peace and freedom,
realize the human rights of all, and
achieve gender equality through the
economic, social, and environmental
dimensions of sustainable development.
The development of new technologies,
such as robotics, can be one of the
key tools for member states of the UN to
achieve the SDGs. As robots are increasingly
present in our societies, they can
play a significant role in building a sustainable
world. However, the development
and deployment of robotics also
come with economic, environmental,
and social challenges [3]. On one hand,
the recent COVID-19 pandemic technically
halted the SDGs' implementation
[55], but it also fast forwarded the application
of robot technologies in many
related domains, bringing long-term
societal advantages [4]. Although both
the potential and problems of robotics
in catalyzing global efforts toward the
SDGs have been discussed at an
abstract level, a detailed understanding
of the issues and concerted efforts to
leverage the technology as an enabler of
the SDGs are still missing.
On 1 October 2021, within the
framework of IROS 2011, the workshop
on the role of robotics in achieving the
SDGs was held (in a virtual space). The
workshop's objective was to identify the
opportunities and challenges brought
by robots with respect to the SDGs by
leveraging a multidisciplinary expertise
Table 1. Composition of the SDG topical panels at IROS 2021.
Theme
Chair
Society and Economy
AJung Moon
Panelists
Katleen Gabriels
Bhavani Rao R.
An Jacobs
Environment
Tamas Haidegger
Robin Murphy
Ricardo Vinuesa
Yasushi Nakauchi
Governance
Alaa Khamis
Edson Prestes
Niraj Bhargava
Dominik Boesl

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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2022

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