Biohybrid Entities for Environmental Monitoring Ronald Thenius1, Wiktoria Rajewicz1, Joshua Cherian Varughese1, Sarah Schoenwetter-Fuchs1, Farshad Arvin2, Alexander J. Casson2, Chao Wu2, Barry Lennox2, Alexandre Campo3, Godfried Jansen van Vuuren4, Cesare Stefanini4, Donato Romano4 and Thomas Schmickl1 1University of Graz, Austria, 2The University of Manchester, United Kingdom, 3Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 4Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy corresponding author:
[email protected] Abstract deeper insights into the complex interactions of the chang- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings-pdf/isal/33/33/1929859/isal_a_00366.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 ing ecosystems and to be able to have an early detection of In the wake of climate change and water quality crisis, it is disruptive processes, we propose a novel concept in robotics crucial to find novel ways to extensively monitor the envi- ronment and to detect ecological changes early. Biomoni- that allows low budget, long term, autonomous environmen- toring has been found to be an effective way of observing tal monitoring to be executed by biohybrid robots. Apart the aggregate effect of environmental fluctuations. In this pa- from minimising human involvement and/or interaction with per, we outline the development of biohybrids which will au- the ecosystem by using autonomous biohybrid robots, we tonomously observe simple organisms (microorganisms, al- will go a step further by making these robots biodegradable. gae, mussels etc.) and draw conclusions about the state of the water body. These biohybrids will be used for continuous Biodegradability of robots ensures that there is no long-term environmental monitoring and to detect sudden (anthropolog- impact on the monitored system.