Hmm.. don't know why asking a question deserves a downvote.
I think you're right that it would be more energy efficient -- since a human weighs less than a rack full of goods.
But energy, compared to the other costs, is a fairly small component of costs.
The bigger question is whether a person is cheaper than a machine.
A few years ago before Amazon bought Kiva, they would sell a complete setup for a large warehouse for $15-20m for 1000 robots. This included a lot of setup, but even if we assume it's just 20m/1000 robots = $20,000 each.
So for $20,000 you can get a robot that will work 24/7 for a few years. Lets pretend the kiva robots are completely junk after 3 years. That's under $7000/yr.
Obviously, that's going to be tough to beat with a human. But for comparison, lets assume a person gets paid federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr), there's no overhead, no management, healthcare, never gets sick, etc. That equals $15000/year. But that's only for 40 hours a week x 52 weeks/year. So really, we'll need 3 people.. so $45000/year. (EDIT: I forgot about weekends, which is another 48 hours. So really, we need 4 people, or $60,000/year.)
Considering that humans are so much more expensive than a kiva robot, the increased energy compared to segways doesn't really effect the outcome. It's clearly cheaper to use robots and simply pay for the increased energy usage.
Comments
Hmm.. don't know why asking a question deserves a downvote.
I think you're right that it would be more energy efficient -- since a human weighs less than a rack full of goods.
But energy, compared to the other costs, is a fairly small component of costs.
The bigger question is whether a person is cheaper than a machine.
A few years ago before Amazon bought Kiva, they would sell a complete setup for a large warehouse for $15-20m for 1000 robots. This included a lot of setup, but even if we assume it's just 20m/1000 robots = $20,000 each.
So for $20,000 you can get a robot that will work 24/7 for a few years. Lets pretend the kiva robots are completely junk after 3 years. That's under $7000/yr.
Obviously, that's going to be tough to beat with a human. But for comparison, lets assume a person gets paid federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr), there's no overhead, no management, healthcare, never gets sick, etc. That equals $15000/year. But that's only for 40 hours a week x 52 weeks/year. So really, we'll need 3 people.. so $45000/year. (EDIT: I forgot about weekends, which is another 48 hours. So really, we need 4 people, or $60,000/year.)
Considering that humans are so much more expensive than a kiva robot, the increased energy compared to segways doesn't really effect the outcome. It's clearly cheaper to use robots and simply pay for the increased energy usage.