The Sustainability Gap in Robotics: A Large-Scale Survey of Sustainability Awareness in 50,000 Research Articles
This highlights a critical gap in sustainability awareness for robotics researchers and institutions, though it is incremental as it quantifies an existing issue rather than proposing a new solution.
The study analyzed nearly 50,000 robotics research papers to assess sustainability awareness, finding that explicit mentions of sustainability impacts are below 2%, SDG references below 0.1%, and sustainability-motivated papers below 5%, revealing a gap between the field's potential and its stated intent.
We present a large-scale survey of sustainability communication and motivation in robotics research. Our analysis covers nearly 50,000 open-access papers from arXiv's cs.RO category published between 2015 and early 2026. In this study, we quantify how often papers mention social, ecological, and sustainability impacts, and we analyse their alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The results reveal a persistent gap between the field's potential and its stated intent. While a large fraction of robotics papers can be mapped to SDG-relevant domains, explicit sustainability motivation remains remarkably low. Specifically, mentions of sustainability-related impacts are typically below 2%, explicit SDG references stay below 0.1%, and the proportion of sustainability-motivated papers remains below 5%. These trends suggest that while the field of robotics is advancing rapidly, sustainability is not yet a standard part of research framing. We conclude by proposing concrete actions for researchers, conferences, and institutions to close these awareness and motivation gaps, supporting a shift toward more intentional and responsible innovation.