100 million humanoids in five years? do the payback sums first

by Rhys Engel

Musk said over the weekend there could be at least 100 million humanoid robots within five years. Maybe. I run a fulfilment site, so I'll price it like I price everything. A humanoid has to beat what it replaces. On my floor that's a picker on two shifts plus whatever fixed automation we'd buy instead. Conveyors and shuttle racks pay back in something like 3-4 years and they never fall over. A humanoid needs to land under that, including charging, downtime and the tech who babysits it. Where it wins is the stuff fixed kit can't do: odd shapes, returns, the mezzanine nobody wants to rebuild. That's a real market. It's not 100 million. So what's the first job where the sums actually work? Genuinely asking, I'd buy one tomorrow if someone showed me.

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Comments

Jonas Egede 2 days ago

you've missed a line in the sums rhys. charging. every site ive wired in the last few years the board was already near its limit before anyone added a forklift charger, never mind a fleet of robots plugging in between shifts. thats a new supply and a DNO wait before it does a single pick not saying it kills it. just saying the first places that win will be the ones with spare capacity on the board, not the ones with the best robot lol

Tomasz W. 2 days ago

from the physio side, the first job should be whatever wrecks the most lower backs. heavy low picks off the bottom shelf. id be happy to lose those clients

Lucas Muller 1 day ago

Rhys, I'll take the question seriously because I spend most of my week on it. The first job that works isn't one task, it's the gap between tasks. Your fixed kit is great at the 80% it was designed for. The cost sits in the 20% that falls out: mispicks, damaged returns, the tote that jammed, the carton that came in the wrong size. Today that's a person walking across the site. A humanoid that only does exceptions doesn't need to be fast, it needs to be awake on nights. Tomasz's low heavy picks are a good second answer, though the units I've worked with don't love real weight near the floor, so I'd expect that one a bit later. And Jonas is right about the board. Charging capacity is the first thing we check on a site survey now, before the robot spec.

Owain Price 4 hours ago

rhys the babysitting tech line is doing a lot of work in those sums lol. thats basically my job on nights, just with fab tools not robots the thing nobody prices is spares. a tool goes down at 3am and the part is sat in a warehouse in another country, the line just waits. a fleet of humanoids is going to need someone on site who can swap a hand or an actuator same shift, not next week not against it, id love something that does the lifting. id just want to see the spares list before the brochure