A Meta-Design Approach to Collaborative Robotics to Achieve Sustainability Goals

This paper analyzes how collaborative robots can contribute to achieving some of the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals and reflects on the advantages that a meta-design approach could bring to robot deployment in real settings. The paper highlights how true sustainability not only depends on technological innovation but also on considerations that pertain to the social sphere of the intervention, like the specific domain, the workplace, and the user community, which require infrastructures for customization, sharing, and collaboration.