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I heard through the grapevine that SoftBank sold something like 22,000 Pepper robots at $12k each. I never understood the utility -- I only ever saw them used
by beambot 6y ago
I heard through the grapevine that SoftBank sold something like 22,000 Pepper robots at $12k each. I never understood the utility -- I only ever saw them used as chintzy marketing gimmicks.
I could easily see 1000 qty sales of SpotMini for the cool factor alone -- i.e. research labs, corporate labs, startups, etc without ever finding a real "value" application. This drives me nuts as a roboticist & CEO of a service robotics company. But so it goes -- at least it's better than their past product: Youtube Videos.
- ivankirigin 6y agoYour company https://cobaltrobotics.com/ https://cobaltrobotics.com/ is really cool. I think it highlights that a vertical with specific needs can be met with the right hardware. No need for a face or arms.
- beambot 6y agoThanks for the kind words.
- Animats 6y agoIf BD/Softbank could get the price of Spot down to $12K, it might sell. Softbank might even subsidize that to grow the market. That's what Softbank does, after all. What the world needs is a good US$5000 assembly robot. Universal Robots has a good one for $23,000. Nobody is building good robots in high volume. Not even Foxconn, which tried.