Innovations in robototronics will completely transform the economy structure. In this regard, one question rises with increasing frequency: how will the machines affect our employment – whether the robots will make our life more easy and interesting or completely substitute the human labor?

What prevail anyway – risks or opportunities?
Both, - considers Martin Ford, businessman and futurologist from Silicon Valley analyzing “robototronics era” in his book “Rise of the Robots”. He suggests that the shortage of employment will lead to the purchase power decline, which will greatly undermine modern economy based on mass consumption.

However, Martin Ford’s projections are not being fulfilled yet. Robots replace humans in the most hard and monotonous domains, but the employment is not being downsized, while the consumption is even increasing. People have more time for creativity. They use the liberated time and resource looking for other fields to apply themselves – arts, new business models, and entrepreneurship.

For example the creative economy growth rate in Great Britain attends 9% yearly. This is one of the most fast-growing industrial sectors in country.

The ideas outsourcing is also gaining popularity – big corporations and giant industries tend to sign contractors who propose the most interesting technological solution. For example the “BMW” consortium contracts other small companies to procure a wide range of spare parts.

Nowadays the manufacturing becomes more individually-tailored. Artisans have won back the reins over markets, as manual assembling for an individual client’s order is as competitive as world brands such as IKEA.

Such realities are not as much of a problem, than of a challenge. Those countries who will address it initially will make the new future leaders.

Nevertheless, where to look for new jobs in the world of robots? To begin with – in their manufacturing and maintenance. Where new opportunities for Ukrainian economy are emerging, primarily – in military robototronics.

During last few years Ukraine has accomplished something in this field: war in the East boost innovations in the military industry.

This market is actively developing, while we have not much of a concurrence here. Experts from MarketsandMarkets project the military robototronics world market will grow from $13,5 to $21,11 billion from 2105 to 2020.

A range of inventions by Ukrainian developers have already been highly appraised at world military robototronics exhibits.

The latest major achievement is Ukrainian drone armored fighting vehicle “Fantom” that entered into top-5 at flagship international exhibit IDEX-2017 in concurrence with thousands other inventions from 50 countries!

Furthermore, several Ukrainian-made drones have already been deployed to facilitate the warfare for the Armed Forces: “Horlytsia” by “Antonov” SE, “Sparrow” and “ANSER” by “Spytech” from Odesa.

We do have the potential; the main thing is to realize it. To achieve this, it is necessary to reunite the efforts of the State, scientific community and businessmen. Only such scope of cooperation can provide results in condition of financial scarcity and booming development of the new technologies.

Igor Iankovskyi,
Businessman, philanthropist