3 ms·

And big robots are physical machines that are likely to cost rather more than a minimum wage scrub to hire/acquire and pay/maintain Is that true? And if it is,

And big robots are physical machines that are likely to cost rather more than a minimum wage scrub to hire/acquire and pay/maintain Is that true? And if it is, will it remain true for long? To staff a position with humans 24x7x365 would cost over $100K/year ($7.25x24x365 = $65K, add in overhead and you get to $100K+ easily). If you can buy a robot to do the job for $100K, plus $1K/month for a maintenance contract), then you break even after the first 13 - 14 months. Add a year if the robot costs $200K. I don't know what these robots will cost, an industrial robot arm is in the $50-$200K range (or higher).

carterehsmith 9y ago
Yeah, I guess that they are still looking for the killer app. For a while, it looked like they could be deployed as military mules; but they were too loud (due to the internal combustion engine) for that purpose. So, what can they do? Meantime, for $7.25/hour, you can hire a human that (hopefully) understands spoken words, and can do jobs requiring fine hand motor skills, e.g. pick-and-pack in warehouse, or serve meals and drinks, stock shelves, flip burgers etc. Boston Dynamics robot cannot do any of that. It can walk over difficult terrain, and flip, but who needs that? Perhaps they should focus on the "hands/arms" parts (as opposed to legs). Industrial robots don't use legs, they are fine with wheels and rails. Also legs are not really what stands apart - cheetahs and horses and mice can use their legs better than humans, but so what. What matters is hands - opposable thumbs, and so on.
- kayoone 9y ago
  > Boston Dynamics robot cannot do any of that Yet. It's clear that they are not aiming for a commercial product anytime soon, this is ongoing research and the progress over the last decade has been huge and will only accelerate.

3 ms·

And big robots are physical machines that are likely to cost rather more than a minimum wage scrub to hire/acquire and pay/maintain Is that true? And if it is,

by Johnny555 9y ago

carterehsmith 9y ago
Yeah, I guess that they are still looking for the killer app. For a while, it looked like they could be deployed as military mules; but they were too loud (due to the internal combustion engine) for that purpose. So, what can they do? Meantime, for $7.25/hour, you can hire a human that (hopefully) understands spoken words, and can do jobs requiring fine hand motor skills, e.g. pick-and-pack in warehouse, or serve meals and drinks, stock shelves, flip burgers etc. Boston Dynamics robot cannot do any of that. It can walk over difficult terrain, and flip, but who needs that? Perhaps they should focus on the "hands/arms" parts (as opposed to legs). Industrial robots don't use legs, they are fine with wheels and rails. Also legs are not really what stands apart - cheetahs and horses and mice can use their legs better than humans, but so what. What matters is hands - opposable thumbs, and so on.
- kayoone 9y ago
  > Boston Dynamics robot cannot do any of that Yet. It's clear that they are not aiming for a commercial product anytime soon, this is ongoing research and the progress over the last decade has been huge and will only accelerate.