The pursuit of autonomous, conscious robotics remains one of the most ambitious goals in modern engineering. Popular culture, epitomized by Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, envisions machines with limitless computational capacity and self-awareness. However, this vision is fundamentally constrained by three interlocking barriers: the immutable laws of physics, the systemic reliance on centralized architectures, and the unresolved ethical dilemmas of codifying morality into non-human agents.