Barbara Mazzolai Advocates for a New Field of Sustainability Robotics

Barbara Mazzolai, Associate Director for Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology, is spearheading a new research field known as "sustainability robotics." Drawing on her background in biology and engineering, Mazzolai has spent her career creating bioinspired robots, including designs modeled after octopuses and plant roots. Her latest initiative, detailed in a manifesto published in Nature Machine Intelligence, calls for a fundamental shift in how engineers design technology. Mazzolai argues that the robotics industry must prioritize environmental impact, aiming to reduce the ecological footprint of machines while improving the relationship between nature, humanity, and technology. By integrating sustainability as a core design principle, she hopes to open new possibilities for the field. Her journey from marine biology to pioneering soft robotics reflects a lifelong fascination with nature’s evolutionary solutions, which she now seeks to apply toward a more sustainable future for global engineering.