The State of Climate Robotics
What they are, where they work, and what comes next
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Hey there! 👋
Skander here.
Robots aren’t just for factories, sci-fi films, or Boston Dynamics hype reels. They're becoming the quiet workhorses of the climate transition.
In today’s deep dive, Driftie Alexander, a multidisciplinary engineer, marine roboticist, and cofounder of Samudra Oceans, makes the case for climate robotics: the machines that install our solar panels, monitor carbon sinks, weed our fields, and dive deep to verify ocean carbon projects.
Alexander’s built automation systems for seaweed farming, carbon removal MRV, and remote marine sensing, so he knows what he is talking about:
🤖 Why climate robotics is about execution, not hype: from deployment to repair
🌍 How bots can help us access extreme environments, reduce costs, and improve certainty
🔬 The limits: where robotics still struggles (think cows, refrigerants, and human behavior)
💸 What business models, not just breakthroughs, robotics needs to scale
⚙️ And why we’re still early on precision, durability, and circularity
🌊 Let’s dive in
But first, who is Alexander?
Alexander is a multidisciplinary engineer and designer who transforms ambitious ideas into real-world solutions. With a background spanning mechanical engineering, carbon methodology development, and marine robotics, he's spent his career at the intersection of technical innovation and climate impact.
As CoFounder of Samudra Oceans, he led the development of automation solutions to scale seaweed farming and develop frameworks for their carbon removal potential. His approach combines hands-on prototyping with systems thinking, blending technical expertise with an appreciation for our natural environment and a love of science fiction.
The State of Climate Robotics
This is a long one again, click the title if you want to read it fully 👆
Robotics are unlocking new possibilities for climate action by automating and expanding data collection, enabling autonomous decision-making, and executing climate positive tasks. With AI advances, robots can now operate in more complex environments, from solar installations to ocean depths, making previously cost-prohibitive climate solutions viable at scale. This exploration of climate robotics reveals both its transformative potential and limitations, setting the stage for deeper examination of how these technologies can help us meet our urgent climate goals.
What is Robotics?
A robot is a mechanical system designed to be able to control its sensing and acting for the purpose of achieving goals in the physical world. They are one of the core methods we employ to automate actions that take place in the physical world. Today, we use robotics in industry to:
To reduce operational costs of an activity
To access areas challenging for human presence
To increase operational precision
As a catalyst/ multiplier
In essence, robotics are used to turn an operational process into a product, or in other terms, to move operational expenses to capital expenses. Most commonly, the OPEX reductions are achieved through augmenting or replacing the human workforce for a task. Historically, this has only been achievable for highly controlled spaces and repetitive, precise tasks like factory assembly lines. Robotics had been weak at operating in areas of changeable environments and situations.
With recent developments in AI, robotic systems are becoming even more viable for the complex environments of the real world, and are finding a much broader set of use cases. Activities that were previously cost or risk prohibitive are now looking more viable with these advancements. Robots both specialised and general purpose are increasingly being developed to solve new problems. One area in particular that they are making great strides is climate impact and the sustainability transition.
What do we mean by Climate Impact?
Before we look at the intersection of robotics and climate, first we should also define what we mean by climate impact. There are lots of definitions and scopes out there but Project Drawdown breaks it down quite well:
Reduce Sources — bringing emissions to zero
Support Sinks — uplifting nature’s carbon cycle
Improve Society — fostering equality for all
To add to this, an activity that is impactful on the climate, is one that can help us prevent future GHG emissions, abate the impacts of climate change or adapt to them. Reducing sources of emissions means we need to move from net emitting activities to activities that emit nothing, such as moving from hydrocarbon based electricity to solar power. Supporting sinks entails both expanding the capabilities of natural greenhouse gas sinks and engineering our own. At the same time, we must also continue to improve our global society, ensuring that people of all regions are able to live well. A daunting task, but one which we are highly capable of taking on and succeeding at.
Why are robotics key to Climate Impact?
To transition successfully, we also need our solutions to be price competitive or even cheaper than incumbent solutions once scaled up. To that end, robotics can have a big part to play, in unlocking and expanding the applicability of climate solutions. There are three key areas that robotics of all forms will have impact:
Deployment and Execution: We have already mentioned how good robotics are at executing and repeating the same task. Many of our solutions will require the same. Additionally, new robotics are allowing us to do these tasks in a wider range of environments, oftentimes even onsite or out in the natural world. Deploying and assembling hardware will be a big part of this success as well. Further, it isn't just the initial building or making of something, robotics can unlock one of the most challenging aspects economically and technically: maintenance and repairs. Both are expensive and time-consuming processes that are oftentimes unique or rare enough to require specialist time and effort. Robotic solutions can speed the process along by both identifying and effecting the repairs.
Data Collection & Analysis: The climate revolution will require more data at even higher resolutions and certainty than ever before. We will need data not just on the processes and activities, but on the environment as a whole. We need to be sure of the impact of our activities, so that we don’t make the same mistakes. Without clear data, we are operating as blindly as we have throughout history. Robotics, especially, unlock the ability to collect data on regions of the world most hostile to human beings. Understanding our ocean and its depths in particular is being unlocked by robotics. Additionally, with the developments in AI, we will be able to glean more useful insights than ever before.
Decision-Making Systems: As data sets and execution experience build up, it isn't inconceivable that our robotics systems will start to take direct action without waiting for human input. The more we can incorporate real-time decision-making into them, the more valuable they will be. First at the individual robot level, but gradually they can begin to take on more project level decisions. A smart, adaptive grid is one example of this, but it could also apply to things like fertiliser addition or harvest timing in agriculture.
Examples
Below are some examples of where robotics are playing a big part in the climate positive transition. These examples are far from exhaustive, but give just a hint of all the incredible solutions in development. The opportunity space for applying robotic solutions is incredibly broad, and it isn't possible to talk about all of them here.
Energy
The energy transition needs to happen faster than any change in infrastructure in history. To do so we are modernising our grids, deploying extensive renewable energy, and building up our energy storage capacity. That's before we even speak of other earlier stage energy like hydrogen and geothermal.
Solar
Solar power requires large spatial deployments, to generate significant amounts of energy. The panels and their associated infrastructure are highly standardised, so well suited to robotic solutions like Charge Robotics and Cosmic Robotics. Bringing down the cost and speeding up installation will help us deploy even more solar power and decarbonise the grid. Beyond installation, regular cleaning and maintenance is required to ensure optimal performance, with soiling of panels causing efficiency reductions of 7% to 50% per year according to a study from NREL. On the cleaning side, Geva-Bot's Flex Patroller is an interesting design in development.
Wind
Wind power is the other big source of renewable energy at the moment. Wind turbines are deployed on land, and out at sea. Those at sea are particularly challenging to access due to the risks and costs of operating offshore. Coupled with the growing number of them, maintenance expense is a big factor in project funding. Robotics will help reduce the cost of the regular inspection and maintenance, making wind power more viable, with solutions like Bladebug and Aerones.
Power Infrastructure
As we continue transitioning to renewables and further electrifying our world, we will need to expand the infrastructure to deliver the power. This covers laying wires, managing pipes, and all the other “out of sight, out of mind” infrastructure that makes our modern world possible. Many of these are underground, so they can be hard to access without having to dig up roads or pavements. Cost estimates are $1.1 to $3.7 million per kilometre for distribution lines, and $3.7 to $62 million per kilometre for transmission lines, according to California's largest utilities. That's a staggering sum, and new robotic solutions can help us not only to deploy and deliver power infrastructure more affordably, but to manage it and optimise it going forwards. Solutions like those funded by ARPA-E in the GOPHURRS program.
Agri-tech
The green revolution was the last time we had a major step change in productivity in agriculture. Mechanisation and automation solutions, along with high yield varietals and chemical fertilisers were the drivers of that revolution. They reduced the man-hours needed to harvest a crop and drastically increased yields. Agriculture 4.0 is the next step, and will lean heavily on robotics, biotechnology and next-gen GMOs.
In the open field, solutions like targeted weeding and spraying and high precision seeding will be unlocked by robotics. High densities of data gathering will help farmers better manage their crop and solutions. Together these solutions can drastically reduce the use of consumables like fertiliser will improve margins and be better for the environment. Companies and solutions of note in this space are Carbon Robotics, Muddy Machines, and Farm Droid.
Another growing space in agriculture is indoor and vertical farming. With the highly controlled environment that this type of farming provides, robotics and data are even more suited. Oishii's automated farms are a great example of this, growing strawberries and other valuable crops. With their recent acquisition of Tortuga AgTech we can see them doubling down. Another fascinating solution in the indoor space is Arugga's pollination technology and robots.
Circular Economy & Waste
Sorting, classifying, identifying, processing,
When it comes to how we dispose of items and products we no longer need, we have a long way to go. Recycling needs to become the norm, but also re-using products, as well as remanufacturing them. Being able to separate and identify materials, analyse broken or damaged parts and effect repairs, and bring it back to a state of usability is necessary. Robotics and AI can be instrumental in making the circular economy possible.
Mechanical sorting of materials, coupled with high quality sensors and visual AI we can sort waste streams faster, with less errors. Given the range of materials and assembly we use, the amount of information needed to sort them is beyond human capability. Recycleye, EverestLabs, and Glacier, are just some of the companies operating in this space and making sorting and recycling viable.
Besides recycling, robotics make upcycling, repair, and remanufacture more viable. The steps of the process of remanufacture are as follows:
Collection
Identification
Disassembly
Repair and replacement (when necessary)
Reassembly
Quality assurance and testing
None of these are easy to do well, and a whole host of technologies will have to come to fruition to make these processes viable. We have seen prototypes like Nike's B.I.L.L. demoed to restore well worn sneakers. But, at the moment, solutions appear to be focused on specialised recovery systems like Apple's Daisy and at Toyota.
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Carbon Dioxide Removal
Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is a vital part of achieving our net-zero targets and a sustainable planet Earth going forwards. There will always be a degree of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and we need to return our atmosphere to a state of stable temperature and CO2 concentrations. Potentially back to 280 ppm, but that is another discussion.
Many of these methods occur over vast areas of land or sea, and not all are easily tracked at the location the initial action is taken. For example, reforestation and seagrass planting and seaweed farming are examples of high spatial activities in inaccessible regions. These can be difficult and expensive for humans to do, but are well suited to robots. A few interesting examples are Trovador and Land Life's robots for tree planting, and Ulysses and Reefgen for seagrasses. On a different track, Applied Carbon's biochar robots are fascinating as well. I also have to include a solution close to home, Samudra Oceans, building seaweed farming robots.
Beyond execution of the CDR activity, we need to conduct regular monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of the process. A lot can be done from drones and satellites, but some solutions require in-situ measurements. Robotics again, are great for this, and are an expansion of IoT and sensing that has developed so much in the past decade. In the ocean for example, companies like Sofar Ocean, Sail Drone, and Bedrock are building datasets and solutions for MRV.
Weather
While not something that we can adjust directly for climate impact, the weather is one of the most important things we can measure and look to adjust. Given the increase in severe weather events and unpredictability, we need to increase our density and regularity of data gathering. New robotic solutions are being built and deployed to help us better target our data collection and weather prediction. Companies like Windborne Systems and Meteomatics are working to that end and have interesting solutions.
On the other side, interest in weather modification is growing, most specifically in cloud seeding. With modern AI and robotics we can target and predict the effects of particulate release and optimise the cloud and rainfall. Rainmaker is a startup in the sector and it will be interesting to see how adoption of cloud seeding progresses.
Where are robotics less impactful?
Robotics isn't going to be impactful everywhere. There are some incredibly large climate change impacts that robotics will struggle to have a direct impact on. Three of note are: enteric fermentation (methane from ruminants), refrigerants, and general behaviour change.
Methane emissions from cattle and other ruminants are not something that can easily be solved or abated using a robotic solution. Indirectly, it can help in producing new feedstocks like Asparagopsis seaweed (via bromoform).
Refrigerant leaks are another big source of greenhouse gas emissions. We continue to move towards lower warming potential options, but they still present a large and hard to manage impact. Appliance disposal presents most of the source of emissions and isn't an area where robots can play a big part.
Finally, and most importantly, we will have to change our behaviour to make a net-zero future possible. We can't engineer our way out of climate change. This is a human problem that has to do with the choices we make to support ourselves and to grow. We have to decide that we are going to make the shift and invest in transitioning ourselves to a net zero economy and bring ourselves back to a stable climate. For example, robotics can't help with solar installations, if we don't fund solar installations.
Robotics and Labour
One of the unspoken questions about the rise of robotics is its impact on jobs and labour. While outside the scope of this piece to talk about in depth or with any real experience, it is worth giving some brief thought to. Not all the roles that robotics will fill are roles that a person would have done. But some definitely will be replaced. With the global population expected to hit around 10 billion people, we do need to consider what work they will do.
Significant amounts of research has looked to quantify the effect of robotics on labour and wages. The findings at the moment appear to be inconclusive with some finding negative effects, such as Acemoglu et al. 2020, and others positive like Klenert et al 2022. Given the datasets appear to be using data sets with ranges before 2020. Some of the advances we have discussed like current AI abilities had not hit commercial robotics at the time.
From a personal view point, it is hard to imagine a future where robotics hasn't taken over many labour intensive tasks and basic automation decisions, but that is contingent on the cost falling. In low cost labour regions, it may turn out that robotics continue to be too expensive to replace human workers. I can see so many positive outcomes, but I still deeply worry about the impacts that automation will have as well.
Why Now?
The first range of robots that crossed those hurdles are aerial robots, and to a lesser extent, marine robotics. The quadcopter and other formats of flying robots have proliferated so quickly that they have become nearly commonplace. The relative simplicity of operating in air and the vast quantity of data they could gather has made them essential in many use cases, including climate action. The marine sector, especially for data gathering has had similar benefits, though the business model historically is more difficult. Marine robots have actually been in use for decades. The wide, empty volumes provide a lot of freedom and leeway for them.
This next step requires a level of improvement to the technical capabilities, precision, and robustness of robotic solutions. We are a long way away, in many cases, from robotics truly making a big impact. Especially those operating out in the environment. In many cases we still need to drastically reduce the cost of the robots, but also the sensors and systems they employ. If we want solutions operating out in the environment we need to ask questions of durability and maintenance. Further, we need to solve the end of life of these robots. Electronics so far have not had the best track record for circularity.
The potential for robots is clear. Now we need to cross these hurdles, find the right business models, and execute.
Closing
Technological developments are not a panacea for climate change. They can't be. To ‘solve’ climate change we will have to change our behaviours, our supply chains, and many aspects of our economy. Technology will play a part, and as we’ve seen, robotics provide an attractive method of scaling or unlocking climate positive activities.
This piece is part 1. Part two will dive deeper into one of the examples given above, Carbon Dioxide Removal, because even the daunting achievement of Net Zero still leaves us over 420ppm. A CO2 concentration well above the ideal. We need CDR to accelerate the return to a more viable atmosphere.
Let’s keep the conversation going. Whether you're building in this space, investing in it, or just fascinated by the intersection of automation and climate action, reach out. These examples only scratch the surface of what’s possible and what’s being built. Some areas I’d love to hear about are:
Applications and solutions I haven’t covered
Real world deployment and scaling challenges
Life cycle assessments of robotic vs traditional operations
Economic and business models that make robotics viable
What to chat? Find me here
Resources & Further Reading
Including a short list of some great resources and further reading on robotics and climate change:
Climate Robotics Network: A great starting place and community to learn more about robotics in climate. Check out their white paper and their annual summit. (2025 summit recordings should be coming)
How Roboticists Can Tackle Climate Change - IEEE - Sherry Chen: Another great overview of the potential for robotics in climate change.
Humanoid Robots in Manufacturing - Spec Tech - Ben Reinhardt: while not directly related to this piece, its a great discussion of generalised versus specialised tools and where the costs and benefits of robotics lie.
Robot Dexterity Still Seems Hard - Construction Physics - Brian Potter: Similar to the above, its a good introduction to one of the big challenges still to be overcome in robotics as a whole
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Great piece! You touched on how electronics haven't had the best track record for circularity, which raises a key question: as we scale climate robotics rapidly, how do we avoid creating a massive e-waste problem in the process? Are there any examples of companies already designing climate robots with end-of-life in mind? (ex: material choice, design for disassembly, product-as-a-service models)