Fly into Monterrey Mexico sometime and notice who is on the flight with you: Nearly everyone will be a technician-looking guy in his 30s or 40s. The times I’ve done it, probably 80% of the flight (including me and my colleagues) fit that criteria. The eastern side of that city is packed wall-to-wall with shiny new manufacturing plants, each filled to the brim with the latest and greatest in industrial automation, robots not excluded. Many of those foreign technician-looking guys are wearing polo shirts emblazoned with the logos of the companies which manufactured that equipment, and they are on their way to service it.
The author’s analysis leaves out the service cost for these robots. What happens when a servo motor or touch sensor malfunctions? Probably 2 technician-looking guys in robot-company polo shirts have to fly in, maybe even from overseas, and bill somebody for 3 days each of hotel stay and dining per diem, on top of the cost of their flight and salary.
Sure, this would become less of an issue if a standard design of robot becomes widely diffused, but consider today how even routine car maintenance can easily cost hundreds of dollars.
The author might suppose that general-purpose robots could be manufactured which is able to diagnose and repair other general-purpose robots—AI will undoubtedly mature to this level in the near future, but sensors and electromechanical elements won’t move so quickly. I expect huge advancement in automation over the next few decades, and huge hiring and training of humans needed to keep the robots alive and doing their jobs.
I did wonder about maintenance costs, but I figured they wouldn’t change the picture too much because I only assume an avg 3 year lifetime for the robot, and figured they wouldn’t need a huge amount of maintenance to make it to that point.
Moreover, if there’s worthwhile maintenance that extends the lifetime further, then the hardware costs could end up cheaper than my per year estimate.
I’m also envisioning the costs after a big scale up, and there would be robot repair shops as numerous as car repair, rather than needing to fly in specialists.
That said, I agree it would be interesting to look at how much is spent on car maintenance per year on a car vs. capital costs. (I expect it would be under 10%?)
The average American drives 45,000 miles in three years, but a car operated 20⁄7 (like your robot) would accumulate about a million miles in that timeframe. Probably it would go through 2 engines and 3 transmissions if it could even be kept on the road. All things being equal it would need 22x as much maintenance than the average of the US fleet, so probably more like 220% of the capital cost.
A really nice printer/photocopier-combo costs about $10,000 like your robot, and is built from of motors, cameras, and computers just like your robot. While it’s mature technology and built to generally high quality standards, if you try running copies 24⁄7 you will quickly be on a first-name basis with local Kyocera guy.
Fly into Monterrey Mexico sometime and notice who is on the flight with you: Nearly everyone will be a technician-looking guy in his 30s or 40s. The times I’ve done it, probably 80% of the flight (including me and my colleagues) fit that criteria. The eastern side of that city is packed wall-to-wall with shiny new manufacturing plants, each filled to the brim with the latest and greatest in industrial automation, robots not excluded. Many of those foreign technician-looking guys are wearing polo shirts emblazoned with the logos of the companies which manufactured that equipment, and they are on their way to service it.
The author’s analysis leaves out the service cost for these robots. What happens when a servo motor or touch sensor malfunctions? Probably 2 technician-looking guys in robot-company polo shirts have to fly in, maybe even from overseas, and bill somebody for 3 days each of hotel stay and dining per diem, on top of the cost of their flight and salary.
Sure, this would become less of an issue if a standard design of robot becomes widely diffused, but consider today how even routine car maintenance can easily cost hundreds of dollars.
The author might suppose that general-purpose robots could be manufactured which is able to diagnose and repair other general-purpose robots—AI will undoubtedly mature to this level in the near future, but sensors and electromechanical elements won’t move so quickly. I expect huge advancement in automation over the next few decades, and huge hiring and training of humans needed to keep the robots alive and doing their jobs.
I did wonder about maintenance costs, but I figured they wouldn’t change the picture too much because I only assume an avg 3 year lifetime for the robot, and figured they wouldn’t need a huge amount of maintenance to make it to that point.
Moreover, if there’s worthwhile maintenance that extends the lifetime further, then the hardware costs could end up cheaper than my per year estimate.
I’m also envisioning the costs after a big scale up, and there would be robot repair shops as numerous as car repair, rather than needing to fly in specialists.
That said, I agree it would be interesting to look at how much is spent on car maintenance per year on a car vs. capital costs. (I expect it would be under 10%?)
The average American drives 45,000 miles in three years, but a car operated 20⁄7 (like your robot) would accumulate about a million miles in that timeframe. Probably it would go through 2 engines and 3 transmissions if it could even be kept on the road. All things being equal it would need 22x as much maintenance than the average of the US fleet, so probably more like 220% of the capital cost.
A really nice printer/photocopier-combo costs about $10,000 like your robot, and is built from of motors, cameras, and computers just like your robot. While it’s mature technology and built to generally high quality standards, if you try running copies 24⁄7 you will quickly be on a first-name basis with local Kyocera guy.
That’s helpful! Makes me think the all in hardware costs could be off by a factor of 2x.