The ecological approach to robotics: a reassessment of the “artisanal” model as an alternative to industrialism?

The design of robots not only reflects the state of knowledge and representations of reality at a given moment. It is also a privileged observatory of the way in which social imaginaries and the constraints of the physical world interact. From industrial robotics to so-called bio-inspired and deformable robotics, the article shows how robotics is simultaneously a place of confrontation but also a point of intersection and exchange between heterogeneous, and sometimes contradictory, conceptions of humans, technology, and living beings, autonomy, and the political models that underpin them. One of the key ideas put forward in this article is that the approach to robotics described as “ecological” coincides with a reassessment of the modes of knowledge and action characteristic of the so-called “artisanal” culture, which offer alternatives to the industrialist model.