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)
It's definitely an important piece that the industry hasn't solved yet. Design for end of life and circularity needs to have much more focus than it currently does. Ensuring that the robots are designed to disassemble, repair, and reuse is important for a positive future. Among others, the Climate Robotics Network is in the process of drafting a set of design principles for Kind Robotics: https://climaterobotics.network/values. These are still in draft but if you want to contribute you can reach out.
This is made more challenging in this space where lots of the equipment is operating out in the environment where more wear and tear can occur. A lot of the examples I've given here are operating in controlled sites, even if they are outside, so collection should't be a problem, but for those in the open world (like the ocean robots) collection at the end of a project is a super important first step.
I don't know that there is one business model that is better than the other for incentivising circularity but if any research or studies have been done on this it would be great to see.
In general, for large capital expense equipment, like many of these examples, companies and organisations want to get every day of life out of that expense possible so repairability, refurbishment, and upgradeability are more common than in the consumer sector, but again, I don't have any hard data on this.
I would add a final note that is maybe slightly counter to this, but I think it's important to look at the net value add of any robot or device too. There are times when a project may not allow for collection or full circularity of the equipment, but is still environment positive in the net. In the long run I hope that this doesn't remain true, but at least today, with the scale of environmental data and action we need, this may be acceptable.
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)
It's definitely an important piece that the industry hasn't solved yet. Design for end of life and circularity needs to have much more focus than it currently does. Ensuring that the robots are designed to disassemble, repair, and reuse is important for a positive future. Among others, the Climate Robotics Network is in the process of drafting a set of design principles for Kind Robotics: https://climaterobotics.network/values. These are still in draft but if you want to contribute you can reach out.
This is made more challenging in this space where lots of the equipment is operating out in the environment where more wear and tear can occur. A lot of the examples I've given here are operating in controlled sites, even if they are outside, so collection should't be a problem, but for those in the open world (like the ocean robots) collection at the end of a project is a super important first step.
I don't know that there is one business model that is better than the other for incentivising circularity but if any research or studies have been done on this it would be great to see.
In the industrial robotics space, (think robots arms in factories for example), we are seeing pretty good longevity and re-use. See this press release from ABB for more details: https://new.abb.com/news/detail/101281/prsrl-bringing-robots-into-the-circular-economy
In general, for large capital expense equipment, like many of these examples, companies and organisations want to get every day of life out of that expense possible so repairability, refurbishment, and upgradeability are more common than in the consumer sector, but again, I don't have any hard data on this.
I would add a final note that is maybe slightly counter to this, but I think it's important to look at the net value add of any robot or device too. There are times when a project may not allow for collection or full circularity of the equipment, but is still environment positive in the net. In the long run I hope that this doesn't remain true, but at least today, with the scale of environmental data and action we need, this may be acceptable.