Who's to say the Construction & Production techs aren't your robot servants mining, building, extracting, and converting things for you? That an incresae in Ground Combat Strength isn't a new model of robot dogmules fighting/carrying for their masters?*
*You are. You are the only one deciding exactly what the numbers mean. Instead of building Genetic Modification Centres and producing a whole subspecies of "people" you can rename them Cybernetic Improvement Centres and produce a whole robot slave race. . . or just subtract an appropriate amount of minerals and/or Research Points, or whatever, and SM mode change your species' Grav or Temp tolerance, and call it a universal improvemnt of the Thingian Race.