Eco-friendly neuromorphic computing for electronic devices
Electronics today have significant environmental impacts in manufacturing, use, and disposal. There are also growing concerns about Europe’s economic and technological dependence on other regions. The EU-funded GreenOMorph project aims to significantly reduce the environmental impact of electronics by addressing manufacturing, usage, and disposal, and by eliminating the need for critical raw materials in electronic devices. The project has chosen neuromorphic computing over traditional Von Neumann computing, drastically reducing energy consumption during use. It will use organic electronics with eco-friendly materials and employ low-temperature additive manufacturing techniques for all organic artificial sensory neuron components designed to recognise tactile pressure patterns. The project’s outcomes will prioritise environmental sustainability while maintaining performance and market acceptance.
Objective
Electronics today cause major environmental impacts through manufacture, use and disposal, as well as growing concerns about Europe's economic and technological dependence on other regions of the world.
The overall objective of GreenOMorph is the radical reduction of the environmental impact of electronics manufacture, use and end-of-life as well as a total avoidance of critical raw materials in manufactured devices. We attack this goal on the one hand by choosing neuromorphic instead of common Von Neumann computing reducing the energy consumed during use by several orders of magnitude. On the other hand, we completely rely on organic electronics with innovative green materials and additive low-temperature manufacturing by blade coating, screen-printing and inkjet printing, in all parts of an organic artificial sensory neuron for recognition of tactile pressure patterns.
The parts of the neuron, as there are an organic tactile sensor, organic signal conditioning circuits and organic artificial synapses, as well as the neuron itself are validated outcomes of the project and contribute to the project portfolio of Responsible Electronics already during their development.
The outcomes of the project will help to replace a performance-at-any-cost attitude, yet staying fully aware that developing non-performing devices not accepted by users would have a great environmental impact as well; so performance targets and market analysis are equally important as the low environmental impact targets and social life cycle assessment are.
Showing that it is possible to fulfil a given purpose at an environmental footprint orders of magnitude smaller than today, and at the same time reduce dependence on other regions of the world, our low-environmental-footprint-first approach will serve as a reference in the future, from scientific communities to technology developers and manufacturers through to the end users.
