One decade, yes, but decades? I bet that, if you ordered 10,000 of these, the price would fall significantly; let's say to $25,000.
Now suppose these things manage to run at a 80% duty cycle. That way, they run for around 130 hours a week, replacing 2.5 workers. Those workers make, say, about 2.5 x $1000 = $2500 a year, for a gap of 10:1.
I do not think it will take a decade to close that gap.
Firstly, you can design your factory for robots; get rid of most toilets, lunch facilities, walkways, etc. Also get rid of 90% of your huge HR staff (which is huge due to high personnel turnover). Pay the high-tech workers who do robot maintenance from the salaries of the toilet cleaners, restaurant personnel, etc, you got rid of.
Also get rid of the non-billable hours you have now that you spend training personnel on producing this month's product.
I think there will still be a large margin, especially since these things eat power (1.5kW per robot adds up) and since these robots may work slower than the humans they replace.
Decades, however, is a long, long time. A single decade is a factor of 64 in Moore's law, so power usage will decrease to about 80W (for the robot) + 1500W/64 (for control hardware) ~= 100W in a decade. Alternatively, some of the extra CPU power, could, conceivably, be used to speed up these robots.
Comments
One decade, yes, but decades? I bet that, if you ordered 10,000 of these, the price would fall significantly; let's say to $25,000.
Now suppose these things manage to run at a 80% duty cycle. That way, they run for around 130 hours a week, replacing 2.5 workers. Those workers make, say, about 2.5 x $1000 = $2500 a year, for a gap of 10:1.
I do not think it will take a decade to close that gap. Firstly, you can design your factory for robots; get rid of most toilets, lunch facilities, walkways, etc. Also get rid of 90% of your huge HR staff (which is huge due to high personnel turnover). Pay the high-tech workers who do robot maintenance from the salaries of the toilet cleaners, restaurant personnel, etc, you got rid of.
Also get rid of the non-billable hours you have now that you spend training personnel on producing this month's product.
I think there will still be a large margin, especially since these things eat power (1.5kW per robot adds up) and since these robots may work slower than the humans they replace.
Decades, however, is a long, long time. A single decade is a factor of 64 in Moore's law, so power usage will decrease to about 80W (for the robot) + 1500W/64 (for control hardware) ~= 100W in a decade. Alternatively, some of the extra CPU power, could, conceivably, be used to speed up these robots.