Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life
Vol. 6(4); March (2020), pp. 217–220
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/jrnal.k.200222.002; ISSN 2405-9021; eISSN 2352-6386
https://www.atlantis-press.com/journals/jrnal

Research Article

Approaching AI and Robotics in an Eco-friendly Way
Luigi Pagliarini1,2,3,*, Henrik Hautop Lund1
Centre for Playware, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
Academy of Fine Arts of Macerata, Via Berardi, 6, Macerata 405111, Italy
3
ISIA Design, Via C. Battisti, 198, Pescara 65123, Italy
12ARTICLE INFOABSTRACT

Article History

Merging among them the most important open questions of the century, in this paper, we outline and define a wide range ofpossible applications and technical forms of a low-energy dissipation in robotic biotechnological system conceived for intelligent
and playful interactions. Moving from earlier works on Wearable and Modular Robotics, we describe how, by using modularrobotics for creating wearable, it is possible to obtain an approximatively self-sustainable and flexible wearable system, consistingof freely inter-changeable input/output modules that through the use of solar, mechanical, and other sources of renewableenergy are able to suit some specific tasks. Therefore, we here attempt to drive the attention on early prototypes to show thepotentialities of such an approach, and focus on depicting possible application in the future of high-tech domain. Indeed, ourartistic experiment is a clear example of how to scale down electronics to an eco-sustainable paradigm, which can still create
playful and useful interactions for many application domains.

Received 27 November 2019
Accepted 14 December 2019
Keywords
Eco-technologyPlaywareuser-friendly robotics
artificial intelligencesustainable technologies
eco-friendly high-tech© 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

1. INTRODUCTION
Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and environmental sustainability are the main trends of our own century. Therefore, the inevitable destiny of all of the future high-tech products is to align tothe process of reducing the environmental impact both in terms ofproduction process, materials, and consumption. For this reason,electronics, computing, and robotics too should try to reduce theirenvironmental effect from the design phase. To work on design
choices to improve sustainability, designers need clear information
on how to keep the whole process untroublesome, sustainable anddoable. As a consequence, such product design consists both ofchoosing between an enormous array of options and, vice versa, avery limited subset of potentials.
Therefore, the main intention of the PixelBeing Project, presented
here, is to design an artifact able to provide product designers with
useful insights into the main triggers of environmental impacts,
so they can change their design conception to be more environmentally friendly. We do so either to support eco-design strategies
and to create necessarily low-cost and eco-friendly products, while
keeping in mind that any product still needs to spare its basic characteristics as robustness, flexibility and easiness in user-support
provided by any developer. Our goal was to realize a prototype that,in part, is a tool for product designers with which they are able
to quickly see, compare and assess design variations without needing to go through the whole experimental process, building on theplayware research methodology [1]. Indeed, eco-friendly design
factors, such as mass, energy use and transport volume, etc. are very
Corresponding author. Email: luigipagliarini@gmail.com*

many and difficult to ensemble together in the same production, andour experimentation shapes some knowledges that might provide
easy entry points to make design improvements and allows designers to develop product-specific guidelines.
We consider our research piece as part of future investigation thatmust face a concrete challenge, a challenge that might lead towards
an epochal change while, on the other hand, the PixelBeing project
being a handmade art-oriented research piece (building on previous robot art investigations [2]) carries along with it a relatively
low-demanding output in terms of tangible industrial production,
by now, and on the opposite an extra request to fulfill a serious
request in terms of innovative aesthetical results.
The PixelBeing philosophy was intended to revisit both the process
and the product of AI and Robotics artifacts under a more ethicallight. We kind of opened a new research process looking for thebest ways to analyze hotspots and opportunities in the production
life cycles under an economical point of view, without sacrificing
efficient, accurate and transparent results. We did that in manyways. A first example regards materials. In PixelBeing it has been
a search on the most available and accessible, easy and effortless
production methods that avoid the use of plastic or other toxic andhigh-impact materials as much as possible. Another clear example
are methods. In PixelBeing we tried to minimize either the size andthe value or the implant difficulty, in terms of speed and effort, of
any given functional component, as well as, we focused on technologies where the lifespan of the whole structure and replacement ofbroken parts is an essential target. One last example regards energy.
We are focusing our research efforts on the most obvious energy
impact of the technology in use. In PixelBeing, indeed, we mostly
make use of solar panel circuits and we are actually immerged in218

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the process of implementing mechanical energy ones in the formof kinetic energy, in which objects have the ability to do work when
they move, and potential energy, in which objects have the ability
to do work due to its own position.
In short, this electronic art project aims at an initial renovation of
the idea of robotics so that it will be able, in the near future, toreach the design, production and consumption of objects that areethically more adequate in the sense of eco-sustainability.

2. THE PIXELBEING PROJECT
PixelBeing is a project for a theatrical character that consists of arobotic system to be worn on the body (derived from previous work[3,4]). It is meant to produce aesthetical and playful interactions,and it is built using concepts derived from modular robotics andmodular Playware [5,6]. It foresees a full body suit made of a mask,
gloves, shoes and a flexible wearable processing system, wherefreely interchangeable input/output modules can be positioned on
the body suit in accordance with the aesthetical demand and tasks,
at hand. The idea is to implement both a virtual (sensors-based)interaction and a more physical one to reach a wider range of possible outcomes, behaviorally and aesthetically. Therefore, the basic
challenge is to design a general interface that focuses on the users’
body interaction with the real world, and possibly with a socialenvironment. At the currents state we have tested the general principles and have developed the mask as well as started assembling
the gloves and the body costume (Figure 1).
This project mainly focuses on eco-friendly technologies andprocesses and tries to exploit the sustainability of any electronic(art) tools. It makes use of recycled components, biomaterials andsupports, solar panels and all of the possible sources of renewableenergies, and it also pay attention to the principle that procedures
and resources should be as natural and easy to access, as much as
possible.
The basic idea is a suit that ends up to be the playfield where toarrange different mechanical, electronic and electromechanicalmodules according to any need. The modules we use on it can beeither isolated or interconnected and should be made so that they
can be easily and quickly relocated, therefore, the way the resulting

suit configuration will perform a task will depend both on themodules’ specific functionalities and on their physical (or theirgeographical) displacement on the suit itself. Modularity is essential, and that is because besides of offering a larger variety of possible configurations and activities it is a pretty eco-friendly approachsince it allows the less expensive procedure when a subpart of theartifact gets out of work. Of course, such What & Where System
can be applied to a wide and complex number of situations andtested on many potentials and can be used to create body interactions in several application domains.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to experiment the possible “definition” and implementation of the idea of module and of module’s
functionality. We framed a number of modules general characteristics as: (A) Each module-circuit is fully autonomous energeticallyand electronically, although a circuit can be thought as ‘eventually’
connected physically or virtually to others modules, to a font ofenergy, or to any other computer interface; (B) although there canbe exceptions, each single circuit is conceived independently fromits final location; (C) a module should be applicable to any geolocation and should be thought as for a general purpose, not limited toany single and specific application.
As said above, modules can be thought as either isolated orinterconnected, and in the latter case we think to a communication paradigm where modules can communicate: (A) Locally:
Neighbor-to-Neighbor communication (wired or wireless); (B)globally: From one module to a module far away (wireless); (C) one
to one communication system; (D) one to many communication
systems; (E) Many to many communication systems. Our research,at the moment, can be considered primitive. We aim to evolve it
in many different ways and a grant and/or a team experienced inelectronics, robotics, informatics and AI would be ideal to such agoal. Indeed, we wish to implement modules that have a highly significant input set (a large number of sensors, including biofeedback
and neurofeedback ones), a clever input pre/processing, and a large
set of articulated outputs (including motor actions).
There are few more levels of research embodied into the PixelBeing.
The first one explores the use renewable energies. We already furnished PixelBeing with accumulators modules as well as displacedon his head different solar panels modules.
The two interconnected modules are able to sustain wee electronic
circuits and if perfected should be able in the early future to supply
enough power to larger circuits.
We are now in the process of exploiting the use of mechanicalenergy modules of two different kinds. The first one, active, thatmakes use of the kinetic energy produced by the body of the actor
wearing the suit, and the second one, passive, which simply uses theability of taking advantage to work thanks to gravitational due to its
own position in three-dimensional space.
The second level of investigation is digging in the potentialities of
the use of biomaterials when building and assembling modules. We
are making a real effort trying to integrate electronic circuits within
the most natural material. Of course, there are many elementary
problems, especially related to the moisture potential, we are slowlyovercoming.

Figure 1 | PixelBeing bio-technological mask. Lateral view.

Meanwhile we basically aim at reaching such a level of integration
where electronics co-exists with alive materials and, probably aL. Pagliarini and H.H. Lund / Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life 6(4) 217–220

219

dream, circuits are somehow partially fed by the growth such processes like the chlorophyll photosynthesis produced by any plant.
A third level of investigation is the one that focuses on targetingthe minimal size of the modules since, often, the smaller modules
are the lesser they consume, the more adaptable is to implement
the whole structure, and the cheaper to repair/replace broken units.
The fourth level of investigation regards the energy flow. Since thePixelBeing design is a design that fully relies on renewable energies
it has to rethink the flow of energy in terms of appropriate modules
location. The “electronics space” must be thought in profitable geometrical terms, so that acquiring and distributing energy itself has
to be done in most convenient way (Figures 2–4).

3. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this paper tried to focus on high-tech future in terms of eco-­sustainability and described as well as defined a full range of possible
implications and the technical contours for a modern robotic biotechnological system. We first depicted the general principles of the new
eco-friendly design and later we described how, by using modular
robotics for creating wearable, it is possible to approach a self-sustainable and flexible wearable system. Therefore, we built our freely
inter-changeable input/output modules system that through the use

Figure 4 | A detail of a sense-and-actuate module to be mounted on
PixelBeing’ suit. Later prototype. A biomaterial-based circuit made out of
natural wood and moss.

of renewable energy is able to reach some important goals as well
as targets, as for example introduce natural materials and renewableenergy in such delicate field as wearable robotics design. We also
highlighted four possible basic principles of building eco-friendly
artifacts: (A) The use renewable energies; (B) use of biomaterials;(C) minimization of the hardware structures; (D) minimization ofenergy flow in space. We here described the progresses of our first prototypes to show the potentialities of such an approach, and focus on
showing possible future applications in all of the electronics domains.
Indeed, our artistic experiment is a clear example of how to scale down
electronics to an eco-sustainable level, which can still create functional, playful and useful interactions for many applicative fields.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Demian Battisti for the help in developing the first prototype system.
Figure 2 | A wooden based PixelBeing’s module. First prototype, circuitwith switch, sensor and led-based actuators.

REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]

Figure 3 | Detail of the PixelBeing mask. A solar-panel-based circuit
module mounted on PixelBeing’s helmet.

[6]

H.H. Lund, Playware research – methodological considerations,J. Robot. Netw. Artif. Life 1 (2014), 23–27.
L. Pagliarini, H.H. Lund, The development of robot art, 13thInternational Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita,
Japan, 2008, pp. 401–405.
H.H. Lund, L. Pagliarini, Robotic art for wearable, Proceedings ofEUROSIAM: European Conference for the Applied Mathematics
and Informatics, 2010, p. 10.
L. Pagliarini, H.H. Lund, Wearing the playware, Artif. Life Robot.
15 (2010), 381–384.
H.H. Lund, P. Marti, Designing modular robotic playware,
RO-MAN 2009 - The 18th IEEE International Symposium on
Robot and Human Interactive Communication, IEEE, Toyama,
Japan, 2009, pp. 115–121.
H.H. Lund, Playware ABC: engineering play for everybody,
J. Robot. Netw. Artif. Life 3 (2017), 283–286.

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AUTHORS INTRODUCTION
Prof. Luigi Pagliarini

Prof. Henrik Hautop Lund

He received his Bachelor’s degree inExperimental Psychology at University ofSt Andrews in 1989 and Master’s degree
at Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La
Sapienza’ in 1991 and Doctor’s degree inPsychology at University of Pavia in 2000 in Italy. He is a neuropsychologist by training, an artist engaged since the early 90sin Software Art, Robot Art and AI-based Art. At the moment,
he is Professor of Theory of Perception and Psychology ofForm, Semantics of Bodies at the Academy of Fine Arts inMacerata, and Innovation Design at the ISIA Design Instituteof Pescara. He is a Consultant Professor at the Playware ofthe Danish Technical University where he deals with Robotsand Dynamic Agents Interfaces Design. He is also currently aPartner Consultant for Entertainment Robotics. In the past, hehas collaborated on various projects with companies such as theLEGO.

He is a Professor of Department ofElectrical Engineering at Technical
University of Denmark. He is head of theCenter for Playware, Technical Universityof Denmark, is World Champion inRoboCup Humanoids Freestyle 2002, and has more than 200scientific publications and 5000 citations. He was awarded theMost Outstanding Healthcare Innovator in the World in 2019.
Over the last year, he received international awards in Tokyo,Singapore, and London. He has developed shape-shifting modular robots, presented to the emperor of Japan, and has collaborated closely on robotics and AI with companies like LEGO,Kompan, BandaiNamco, Microsoft, Mizuno. He is the inventor of the Moto Tiles (www.moto-tiles.com), which are used byseniors all around the world.