Welcome to the euRobotics Diversity and Inclusion Initiative

Why an euRobotics DII

Robotics is a transformative technology that has the potential to fundamentally change the way in which people live their daily lives and conduct their work. From factory floors to hospital environments and everyday homes, robots are slowly becoming ubiquitous and will undoubtedly continue to be so as both robot hardware and software advance. This large potential implies that we have a large responsibility to ensure that robotics technologies are developed for the benefit of everyone, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, background, profession, or lifestyle. This is also the best way to guarantee the overall acceptance of robots throughout European society.

Ensuring that robotic technologies are developed with this objective in mind is best achieved by having a diverse robotics community that can contribute with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Such diversity cannot be achieved overnight, but requires a continuous effort that welcomes everyone who joins the robotics field and motivates them to contribute towards the development of robots.

The euRobotics Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (DII) was established with this motivation in mind, such that its main purpose is to initiate activities that can advance the diversity and inclusion across euRobotics activities.

Goal / scope of the DII initiative

Our initiative has two main objectives.

On the one hand, we organise activities, such as workshops and seminars, whose aim is to initiate discussions on topics related to diversity and inclusion. These activities should serve as a bridge that can connect different stakeholders involved in the development, deployment, and use of robotic technologies.

On the other hand, we want to collect ideas and lessons learned and, based on those, create guidelines and handouts that both help in making euRobotics events welcoming for everyone and, beyond that, have the potential to advance the development of robots for the benefit of European society.

The activities of the DII initiative are driven by the volunteering work of numerous individuals who have a strong motivation to contribute towards widely beneficial robotic technologies as well as towards a more inclusive European robotics community.

Activities of the group

Upcoming activities

• ERF2027 workshop ‘The Donut Paradox: Why Belonging in Robotics Is Still Not the Default’: This workshop moves past acknowledging the diversity gap in robotics. It asks the specific, practical questions about recruitment, retention, visibility, and mentoring that actually make belonging the default, not the exception.
• ERF2027 workshop ‘Exploring robot co-design and deployment principles for ethical, inclusive and sustainable innovation’: This workshop will explore expert and user experience to develop principles for the (co)design and deployment of ethical, inclusive and sustainable robotic systems to enhance adoption, and longer term economic and societal impact.
• ERF2027 Diversity / Inclusion webpage – click here to access

Past activities

• ERF 2026 workshop “From Awareness to Action: Co-Creating the euRobotics Diversity Initiative”