4. The limits of robotic bio-inspiration

The applied and fundamental advances made possible by bio-inspired robots should not overshadow the limitations of this approach , which concern its degree of imitation of living organisms, the relevance of its applications and its ethical implications.

When it comes to imitating living things, one source of difficulty is clearly that nature has had time to choose the materials with which to produce a given creature, whereas human engineers have to make do with the materials at their disposal.