Towards new frontiers for distributed environmental monitoring based on an ecosystem of plant seed-like soft robots

Abstract

Understanding and monitoring natural ecosystems is necessary for an efficient implementation of sustainable strategies to tackle climate and environmental-related challenges, such as: protect and improve the quality of air, water, and soil; safeguard species biodiversity; and effectively manage natural resources. A longstanding challenge for environmental monitoring is the low spatial and temporal resolution of available data for many regions. Also, new approaches for the design of sustainable technologies is urgently needed to reduce current problems related to energy costs and e-waste produced.