**The Oxford Robotics Institute explores systems and applications across domains. Source: ORI

We live in an era of great paradox. The AI is already writing poetry and drawing seals, while the most advanced robot may have been unable to find its way out of a room with a mirrored door for hours. Where is the promised rise of the machines? Alas, it is canceled due to a trivial sensor malfunction.
The harsh truth is that there is a gap between artificial intelligence in the digital environment and its embodiment in the physical world. Professor Ingmar Posner, director of the Oxford Institute of Robotics, once laid it out on the shelves: "People often ask me about the "mind" of a robot. And I answer: the main problem is not to teach him to think, but to teach him not to fall when a new rug is placed on the floor."
And he's absolutely right. The problem is not in "awareness", but in basic physics and the unimaginable complexity of our world. Simulation is a sterile digital paradise where all laws are known and respected. The reality is chaos, where light changes, surfaces bend, and the most important objects (such as people's feet or cats) have a bad habit of suddenly moving.
"Most of our time is spent not writing ingenious algorithms, but getting a robot to distinguish a shadow from a hole in the asphalt," notes Posner. This is the "unsexy" truth about robotics. While futurists are talking about the singularity, engineers have been struggling for years to ensure that the manipulator reliably picks up the same object from different angles.
But this does not mean that progress has stopped. He just followed the path of pragmatism. Instead of creating a universal robot servant, we create brilliant "disabled" machines that are perfectly tailored to one task. They sort, grind, stack, and inspect with precision beyond the reach of humans. Their "intelligence" is narrowly focused, but no less effective. And it is at the junction of this engineering genius and practical application that the most interesting career opportunities lie. Those who understand this often find themselves at the forefront, and it is these specialists who are in demand on specialized platforms, for example, in jobtorob.com .
So maybe we should stop expecting humanity from robots. The value of modern robotics lies not in its ability to maintain a philosophical conversation, but in its undivided dedication to a single, often boring, but vital function. And this, if you think about it, has its own special romance.