With a tenacity worthy of better use, we continue to create machines that will one day leave us without a job, and at the same time without the last island of illusion about our superiority. Reports from MassRobotics and leading analytical companies paint a picture that makes it funny and a little disturbing. So let's see how we dig our own technological grave.

1. Sensor fusion: A problem that we created in order to heroically solve it.

Object detection is the holy grail of robotics. And here humanity showed its ingenuity in the best traditions: we took lidars (67.5% of developers), cameras (85%), Time-of-Flight sensors and IMU (62.5%), and mixed them into a cocktail called "sensory fusion". The result? The combination of LiDAR and camera was recognized as the "most effective" by 75.7% of respondents.

And now the sarcasm: the main problem with this technological splendor is not that a robot can confuse a cat with a puddle, but that this whole system is damn expensive and difficult to integrate and calibrate. We have reached such a level of complexity that our creations require more attention and care than a pet. Congratulations! We created a problem from a solution, and now we are looking for a solution to the problem we created. An ingenious business plan, isn't it?

2. AI on the edge: When you're dumber, you're smarter.

The next masterpiece of human thought is Edge AI, or "AI on the periphery." Half of the respondents (50%) AI is already being implemented right at the sensor level. What for? To reduce delays and improve real-time performance.

Incredibly, but the fact is: we're trying to make cars smarter by making them... dumber! Rather, they are less dependent on their large and centralized brain. We realized that forever dragging gigabytes of raw data to the cloud and back is like ordering pizza from another city. It is much more efficient to put a small but proud neural network directly into the sensor, so that it decides for itself what should be transmitted up. It seems that we unconsciously copy our own nervous system, where the spinal cord reflexively pulls away from the heat without waiting for a command from the brain. All that remains is to teach robots to shout "Ouch!".

3. Motor control: The eternal pursuit of the perfect reaction

Motors are the muscles of robots. And here the most boring but vital problems await us. It turns out to be for 51.3% of engineers have real-time response times that are "extremely critical." Another 33.3% modestly call it "somewhat critical."

Imagine a robotic surgeon who thinks for half a minute about the eternity of existence while holding a scalpel to your heart. It's not very pleasant, is it? Or a robot in production that reacts so slowly that it manages to read a chapter of "War and Peace" while its human "colleague" shouts at it to get its paw out from under the press. The key challenges are real management (43.6%), energy efficiency (41%) and accuracy (28.2%). We demand from machines what we often cannot achieve from ourselves: instant reaction, concentration, and energy savings.

4. Power consumption: The eternal search for an outlet

That's where the irony of fate manifests itself in all its glory! We create autonomous robots that should be free and independent, but we chain them to an outlet like a chained dog. Half of the respondents rate their satisfaction with energy consumption at "three" on a five-point scale. And only 10.5% are truly satisfied.

44.4% are aimed at systems with a power of 50-100 watts. This is, for a second, the power of a good light bulb. We're trying to cram artificial intelligence into an energy budget that's barely enough to make toast. Our creations suffer from an eternal hangover, constantly being in search of the next "dose" of electricity. And until we invent a compact and eternal power source, the dream of a truly free robot will remain a dream. Perhaps this is where services like jobtorob.com where you can simply rent a robot with a couple of spare batteries while your own is being charged by an ever-unhappy technician.

5. Security and protection: We invite hackers to a celebration of disobedience

As robots get smarter and form packs, security issues become more acute. The majority (64%) already use redundant sensors and protected components. But the integration of AI introduces new, delightfully complex threats.

Cybersecurity is the main nightmare for 48.6% of developers. Imagine that your home cleaning robot suddenly starts sending your intimate selfies to hackers from the Neuro World, and an industrial manipulator starts a blog instead of assembling cars, where it stigmatizes capitalism. At the same time, as noted in the report, many companies still do not have a specific security plan focused on AI. We are building a digital Babylon without thinking about how to protect it from our own downfall. It's like building a house with sliding glass walls and leaving the doors wide open in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

6. Humanity as the main trend (which is outliving itself)

There is one simple irony behind all these technological trends.: We are so enthusiastic about creating our future that we forgot to ask if we need a place in it. Robots solve the problems of labor shortages, take on boring, dirty and dangerous jobs, and promise us a golden age of leisure and creativity.

But what will we do when all the "boring" jobs to rob are really occupied by robots? Perhaps we will forever look for ourselves on hiring platforms that evolve from finding jobs for humans to finding jobs for robots. The future we find ourselves in is beginning to resemble good old science fiction, where humanity, having created its successors, is relieved to hand over the reins to them and retire to a well-deserved rest. We can only hope that the machines will have a good sense of humor and they will at least give us the right to joke about it.