What make a nice change from the norm would be developers to update their robots when market conditions change.
Robots, like anything based on code, will only do what they are programmed to do. When market conditions change, robots will still try to do what they were programmed to do, despite the fact that the outcome might not be the desired one.
Sure, automation is great, provided you only ever want to do the same thing over and over again. If any variables come into play (changing market conditions for example) then your automation algorithm needs to be updated or the results probably be less than stellar.
Short-term, I've see some pretty decent results from various robots. Long-term, results have tended to fall off. For long-term automated trading to be successful, you need a robot that is constantly updated by the developers.