Will the emergence of self-driving cars, drones, repair robots, and wireless monitoring networks pull us closer to nature, or will the autonomous technologies keep us indoors?
A survey of over 170 experts, led by the University of Leeds, shared their ideas and predictions – both positive and negative – on the potential opportunities and challenges for urban biodiversity and ecosystems.
Through the online questionnaire, technology professionals highlighted ways that autonomous systems could support nature, including the identification of emerging pests or monitoring of plant-care.
The survey, however, also revealed a downside to cutting-edge robotic technologies, like increased pollution.
Robots and drones, for example, generate new sources of waste and may impact urban areas especially. Cities will have to accommodate a growing use of robots, self-driving cars, and drones, potentially leading to a loss of green space.
All 170 of the survey respondents, from 35 countries, worked in one of five areas: environmental science, engineering, smart cities, robotics and automated systems or urban planning.
The research, published this month in Nature Ecology & Evolution , is authored by a team of 77 academics and practitioners.
The survey, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, is part of Leeds' Self Repairing Cities project , which aims to enable robots and autonomous systems to maintain urban infrastructure without causing disruption to citizens.
Autonomous technologies, defined in the survey as "technologies that can sense, analyze and interact with their physical environment," have a large range of potential applications, such as autonomous transport, waste collection, infrastructure maintenance and repair, policing and precision agriculture. In an open field with such exciting possibilities, the robotics and automation industry must also make sure not to ignore the impacts of the cutting-edge drones, vehicles, and monitoring tools, according to the study's organizer.
"Technology, such as robotics, has the potential to change almost every aspect of our lives," said lead author Dr. Martin Dallimer, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds . "Although the future impacts on urban green spaces and nature are hard to predict, we need to make sure that the public, policy makers and robotics developers are aware of the potential pros and cons, so we can avoid detrimental consequences and fully realize the benefits."
In a short Q&A with Tech Briefs below, Dr. Dallimer reveals which technologies will have the biggest impacts on the environment — and it won't be just one, he says.
Tech Briefs: When you take all of these technologies together — UAVs, self-driving cars, robots, wireless sensor networks — which one do you think will have the biggest impact on our environment?
Dr. Martin Dallimer: This is a very difficult question to answer. In the paper, we identified nine areas that we felt robotics and automated systems are likely to impact in the near future. For instance, technologies such as self-driving cars, and their associated infrastructure, will be very noticeable to people, and could radically alter how we use land in and around cities. Drones (both flying and on the ground) and sensor networks will change how we monitor and manage urban greenspaces, nature and wildlife. This is likely to change our understanding, as scientists, of urban nature, and also change how people in general interact with the nature around them.
A further big unknown issue is how drones, self-driving cars and so on will influence wildlife and habitats directly, such as interfering with animal behaviors or resulting in new forms of waste and pollution. The biggest overall impacts on our environment are actually likely to come from the unknown interactions between all of the technologies combined, rather than one individual type.
Tech Briefs: What were the most surprising pieces of feedback you received in the survey? Were there predicted environmental impacts that surprised you, or might surprise our readers?
Dr. Dallimer: I think everyone knows about self-driving cars and drones, so the fact that these technologies will alter how we use land and greenspaces is probably not surprising. Equally, people are familiar with how drones are now used to monitor wildlife and biodiversity.
The more surprising, and hard to predict, aspects are likely to be how the new technologies alter our own relationships with nature and the outdoor world. Will we find ourselves barely going outside at all as everything gets delivered to our door, or will the ability to access fun, real-time information on what animals and plants live near us, and what they are doing (breeding, migrating, flowering) lead to a new explosion in interest in nature?
Tech Briefs: Why is it so important to have a survey like this?
Dr. Dallimer: Presently, we have little appreciation of the pathways through which the widespread uptake and deployment of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) could affect urban biodiversity and ecosystems. To date, information on how RAS may impact urban biodiversity and ecosystems remains scattered across multiple sources and disciplines, if it has been recorded at all. Our paper represents an attempt to pull together the information and expertise that exists on this new and fast moving topic.
Tech Briefs: Where was there the most consensus regarding impact?
Dr. Dallimer: With the importance of new technologies for improving how we monitor urban ecosystems and biodiversity.
This is an area that is already quite well developed, so we saw lots more opportunities for this to continue to develop.
How do you think robotics and autonomous systems will impact the environment? Share your questions and comments below.
Transcript
00:00:00 (Music) TERRY FONG: The Intelligent Robotics Group is developing new robotics technology to improve the way that humans can explore the solar system. A key part of that is looking at how humans and robots can work together as teams so that humans can support robots, and that robots can support humans. We want to interact with autonomous systems. We want to be able to create systems that we can
00:00:31 trust, in all kinds of circumstances. Several years ago when we started working with these remotely operated robots, we needed a piece of software that would allow us to look at the terrain, to look at the sensor data coming from the robots, and understand its situation. And that led to the creation of VERVE. VERVE is a 3-D robot user interface. It allows us to see the 3-D world that
00:00:55 the robots are operating in. It's been used with our K10 planetary rovers, our K-REX planetary rover, with SPHERES on the Space Station and with our new robot, the Astrobee, which will be on the Space Station in 2017. In 2013 we carried out a series of tests with astronauts on the International Space Station, and in those tests we had astronauts who were flying 200 miles above the Earth remotely operate a
00:01:23 robot, the K10 planetary rover, here in California. MARIA BUALAT: You cannot joystick a robot at the distance we're dealing with because of time delay. You need a robot that's very safe, that can operate on its own, can complete tasks on its own. On the other hand, you still want the human in the loop, because the human brings a lot of experience
00:01:45 and very powerful cognitive ability that can deal with issues that the autonomy's not quite ready to handle. That's why NASA feels it's a very potent combination to use both the human capability and the robotic capability together. TERRY FONG: After our 2013 tests involving an astronaut on the Space Station remotely operating a robot here on Earth, we realized the software could be applied to lots of different uses.
00:02:18 One of those uses happened to be supporting the operation of an autonomous vehicle. We were very excited when Nissan was interested in applying this to self-driving cars. EUGENE TU: One of the key goals of NASA is to transfer technology out to the commercial sector for broader use. When we engage in these type of partnerships we have a real opportunity to gain knowledge from them as well.
00:02:44 Our collaboration with Nissan North America and with other self-driving car companies is an example of that. One of the things we gain is to learn how our autonomy is used and how humans interact with that. The need for autonomy and greater autonomy is always going be there for NASA missions in the future. But seeing it applied in a real world
00:03:07 example of self-driving cars, for example, we will get that knowledge and benefit as well. TERRY FONG: I love robots. I help build and test them. In the future, I see robots everywhere. We have the potential of this technology reaching thousands or millions of people, and that's really exciting. (Music)
