8 ms·

this is very cool. could anyone help break down the costs? specifically: 1. what are the most expensive parts, and how fast is technology advancing (or costs

this is very cool. could anyone help break down the costs? specifically: 1. what are the most expensive parts, and how fast is technology advancing (or costs declining) on those parts? 2. what scale is necessary for a comparable robot to retail for < $1000?

sbierwagen 6y ago
1) Most expensive individual third-party components would be all the servos together, then the computer, then the realsense, then the lidar. All the custom body panels and custom cut carbon fiber extrusions are expensive now, cheap when scaled. 2) 5,000 - 50,000? Right now it's about twice as expensive per kilo as a Lamborghini Aventador, and they only made ~4,000 of those. It needs to be 18x cheaper to hit your price target, and that wouldn't be impossible at scale. A big chunk of the price tag is generous margin (because they don't know how many they'll sell) and paying for the software, which amortizes well. Those costs go away at scale, but then you need to spin up tech support and a repair department. I do tech support for educational robots, and I can tell you it's not... simple, or profitable. Getting to that number would be hard. The design of the robot is wonderfully simple, (great! delightful!) but it's too easy to clone: the only complicated bit is the telescoping arm. Everything else is open source or commodity parts off the shelf. If they actually do sell a thousand of these, the Chinese will rush in and eat their margin. I hope either they have patents and some aggressive lawyers, or friends high up in the Biden administration, because if the design is successful, their company won't survive international competition.
- janekm 6y ago
  The telescoping arm is cute, and provides benefits for reaching into constrained spaces like a washing machine, but in the first clones it would likely be replaced with the standard "cylindrical" (e.g. industrial robot style) arm. Hard to imagine that they could have gotten a patent on "robot arm on Segway". The elevator part though?
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    A conventional arm? Oh no thank you. Heavier, need a motor out on the elbow joint with another expensive low-backlash gearbox, mast has to be heavier to support the off-axis torque loads, grasp trajectories have another DOF or two. Skip that, please. And it's not like conventional arms are even cheap! If you could buy a decent 1.5 kilo payload arm for less than $5k, you'd have a whole different argument. From the way the telescoping arm moves, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it's driven by a flex-tape linear actuator. Pretty cheap, lets you put the heavy motor right next to the mast, no precision bearings, backlash not so much a problem. The whole package really is a great design, I'm a big fan. You can tell Edsinger has been using robots out in the real world, with regular people beating them up.
ragebol 6y ago
- Cameras. I think that's an Intel RealSense on top - Lidar on the base. RPi-Lidar costs a few hundred dollars. - Motors. A bunch of Dynamixels according to the docs, also a couple hundred dollars each - Carbon fiber tubes. No idea what those cost.
- macrolime 6y ago
  I've been wondering about the cost of motors used in robots. For many robots it's actually the main cost, but why are they so expensive and will we realistically see cheap, powerful servos in the near future?
numpad0 6y ago
Usually the most expensive parts of a robot is sheer number and compounding effects of various components and requirements... A motor may cost $5 but driver costs another $5 and cables costs another and you have to stack it against one another and if it has to support its own weights the motor must be better and if motor is better the driver etc etc and those keep snowballing.
contingencies 6y ago
Robotics founder with four years experience on the ground in China here. You could make one for retail for <$1000 now, although the telescoping motion system on the depth axis would likely need to be downgraded, and you'd drop the name brand sensors. Case in point: In China, floor cleaning robots (similar base motion and sensor requirements) cost ~1000RMB (~USD$142) retail. https://s.taobao.com/search?q=地+机器人&imgfile=&js=1&sort=sale-desc https://s.taobao.com/search?q=地+机器人&imgfile=&js=1&sort=sale-...

sbierwagen 6y ago

1) Most expensive individual third-party components would be all the servos together, then the computer, then the realsense, then the lidar. All the custom body panels and custom cut carbon fiber extrusions are expensive now, cheap when scaled. 2) 5,000 - 50,000? Right now it's about twice as expensive per kilo as a Lamborghini Aventador, and they only made ~4,000 of those. It needs to be 18x cheaper to hit your price target, and that wouldn't be impossible at scale. A big chunk of the price tag is generous margin (because they don't know how many they'll sell) and paying for the software, which amortizes well. Those costs go away at scale, but then you need to spin up tech support and a repair department. I do tech support for educational robots, and I can tell you it's not... simple, or profitable. Getting to that number would be hard. The design of the robot is wonderfully simple, (great! delightful!) but it's too easy to clone: the only complicated bit is the telescoping arm. Everything else is open source or commodity parts off the shelf. If they actually do sell a thousand of these, the Chinese will rush in and eat their margin. I hope either they have patents and some aggressive lawyers, or friends high up in the Biden administration, because if the design is successful, their company won't survive international competition.

janekm 6y ago
The telescoping arm is cute, and provides benefits for reaching into constrained spaces like a washing machine, but in the first clones it would likely be replaced with the standard "cylindrical" (e.g. industrial robot style) arm. Hard to imagine that they could have gotten a patent on "robot arm on Segway". The elevator part though?
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  A conventional arm? Oh no thank you. Heavier, need a motor out on the elbow joint with another expensive low-backlash gearbox, mast has to be heavier to support the off-axis torque loads, grasp trajectories have another DOF or two. Skip that, please. And it's not like conventional arms are even cheap! If you could buy a decent 1.5 kilo payload arm for less than $5k, you'd have a whole different argument. From the way the telescoping arm moves, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it's driven by a flex-tape linear actuator. Pretty cheap, lets you put the heavy motor right next to the mast, no precision bearings, backlash not so much a problem. The whole package really is a great design, I'm a big fan. You can tell Edsinger has been using robots out in the real world, with regular people beating them up.

ragebol 6y ago

- Cameras. I think that's an Intel RealSense on top - Lidar on the base. RPi-Lidar costs a few hundred dollars. - Motors. A bunch of Dynamixels according to the docs, also a couple hundred dollars each - Carbon fiber tubes. No idea what those cost.

macrolime 6y ago
I've been wondering about the cost of motors used in robots. For many robots it's actually the main cost, but why are they so expensive and will we realistically see cheap, powerful servos in the near future?

numpad0 6y ago

Usually the most expensive parts of a robot is sheer number and compounding effects of various components and requirements... A motor may cost $5 but driver costs another $5 and cables costs another and you have to stack it against one another and if it has to support its own weights the motor must be better and if motor is better the driver etc etc and those keep snowballing.

contingencies 6y ago

Robotics founder with four years experience on the ground in China here. You could make one for retail for <$1000 now, although the telescoping motion system on the depth axis would likely need to be downgraded, and you'd drop the name brand sensors. Case in point: In China, floor cleaning robots (similar base motion and sensor requirements) cost ~1000RMB (~USD$142) retail. https://s.taobao.com/search?q=地+机器人&imgfile=&js=1&sort=sale-desc https://s.taobao.com/search?q=地+机器人&imgfile=&js=1&sort=sale-...