Robotics is entering our daily lives. The discipline is increasingly crucial in fields such as agriculture, medicine, and rescue operations, impacting our food, health, and planet. At the same time, it is becoming evident that robotic research must embrace and reflect the diversity of human society to address these broad challenges effectively. In recent years, gender inclusivity has received increasing attention, but it still remains a distant goal. In addition, awareness is rising around other dimensions of diversity, including nationality, religion, and politics. Unfortunately, despite the efforts, empirical evidence shows that the field has still a long way to go before achieving a sufficient level of equality, diversity, and inclusion across these spectra. This study focuses on the soft robotics community-a growing and relatively recent subfield-and it outlines the present state of equality and diversity panorama in this discipline. The article argues that its high interdisciplinary and accessibility make it a particularly welcoming branch of robotics. We discuss the elements that make this subdiscipline an example for the broader robotic field. At the same time, we recognize that the field should still improve in several ways and become more inclusive and diverse. We propose concrete actions that we believe will contribute to achieving this goal, and provide metrics to monitor its evolution.

中文翻译：

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软机器人：机器人领域的平等、多样性和包容性之路。


机器人技术正在进入我们的日常生活。该学科在农业、医学和救援行动等领域变得越来越重要，影响着我们的粮食、健康和地球。与此同时，越来越明显的是，机器人研究必须拥抱并反映人类社会的多样性，才能有效应对这些广泛的挑战。近年来，性别包容性越来越受到关注，但仍然是一个遥远的目标。此外，人们对多样性其他方面的认识也在不断提高，包括国籍、宗教和政治。不幸的是，尽管做出了努力，经验证据表明，要在这些领域实现足够水平的平等、多样性和包容性，该领域还有很长的路要走。这项研究的重点是软机器人社区——一个不断发展且相对较新的子领域——并概述了该学科平等和多样性的现状。文章认为，其高度的跨学科性和可访问性使其成为机器人学中特别受欢迎的一个分支。我们讨论了使该分支学科成为更广泛的机器人领域的范例的要素。与此同时，我们认识到该领域仍应在多个方面进行改进，变得更加包容和多样化。我们提出了我们认为有助于实现这一目标的具体行动，并提供了监测其演变的指标。