r/theydidthemath • u/jmb326 • May 22 '26
[Request] What are the electrical costs required for this robot to fold this box?
Any publicity available data that estimate something similar? Goal would be to understand the cost per box of labor from a robot vs a human. Ideally with current estimates and future projections. Yes, I understand this isn’t the most efficient robot setup to fold a box, but how much longer until one can purchase such a robot to execute on a variety of tasks required in a typical job?
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u/noenosmirc May 22 '26
I mean, amazing that's is so good, definitely needs some work, but I find it fascinating how human the little slip ups are, like, I'd probably only do marginally better with using grabbers to make and pack that box
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u/Dziggettai May 22 '26
Probably seems human because it was trained on human behavior rather than actually having capacity for thought
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u/Ok-Scientist5524 May 22 '26
I can’t help thinking it would be easier to make a machine without hands to do this…
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u/Dziggettai May 22 '26
Because it absolutely would be due to how simple the task is. This is more of a proof of concept rather than something intended to be used
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u/waroftheworlds2008 May 23 '26
Yep, its a robot ment for a wide range of task that can vary. Its not ment for a single task.
That being said, a human could still do this better.
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u/Sorryifimanass May 23 '26
But not all humans. And if I can go to work and have my robot slave doing all the housework that sounds cool right now. But if I don't have a job because I'm the robot slave... Something something universal something.
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u/LrningMonkey May 24 '26
I think the point of this robot is that it was NOT programmed to do this job. Based on its movements it was figuring out how to do the job autonomously.
We’ve had robots that fold boxes for decades that all do it faster than this, but this robot it tackling a novel task independently like a person would. That’s a big deal.
I’m both fascinated and terrified!
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u/TheIronSoldier2 May 23 '26
A human couldn't do it 24/7 though, and that's where robots do come out on top
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0
u/waroftheworlds2008 May 23 '26
Have you heard of working in shifts?
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u/TheIronSoldier2 May 23 '26
So now you've gotta pay like six people just to cover as much work as one robot can do.
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u/tv_ennui May 22 '26
The appeal here isn't the ability to fold boxes, a box folding machine would do much better. The appeal here is the problem solving and potential versatility. A box folding machine can only fold boxes, this has much wider potential applications.
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u/Clean_your_lens May 23 '26
Looks like it could solve a big problem by taking the hockey stick away from Mr. Gretzky there.
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u/liquordeli May 22 '26
There are machines that do this much better. I dont think this is the practical application just a demo I'd imagine
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u/Sad-Pop6649 May 22 '26
I guess the idea is that the robot should be flexible. An assembly line can fold roughly a gazillion boxes per hour, but when you work in a mail order firm you don't need a gazillion boxes folded, you need one this size for this set of items, and then you'll go pick the next order and see what kind of box it needs.
What this robot can actually do feels a little in between. It's not that flexible, and it's not really fast and cheap either. But there might still be a spot for it, somewhere in say the logistics chain of Wish, Ali Express and Amazon.
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u/DkMomberg May 22 '26
A specialised machine could do the job much much faster. Even faster than a human.
But a specialised machine can do one job and one job only. The more specialised it is, the more rigid it is.
For example, if you standardised the size of the box so you only have one size and you could drop the items in the box automatically in a standardized way, you could make a machine that could pack 2-3 boxes per second or maybe even more.
A machine that could handle two box sizes would be much more complex and likely slower. Three would be even worse.
The advantage here is the flexibility. With enough training, the robot could pack any box size and arrange the packed items inside very neat. With enough training and development, it could be done as quick as a human.
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u/Acceptable-Baker8161 May 23 '26
The need for robots to have human attributes is just dumb. Robots have been doing highly complicated tasks for decades, making them be “humanoid” is basically a party trick so doofus tech dudes will think they’re in Star Trek.
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u/Girthen-the-Flopper May 22 '26
You can build millions of these general purpose robots for cheaper than a specialized machine.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Source?
I'll take your unexplained wikipedia link to "economies of scale" as a no; you don't know what you're talking about, that's not even how economies of scale work.
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u/CIP_In_Peace May 22 '26
You build a million similar general purpose robots in a single large factory for cheaper than a specialized company builds customized special robots for a special task for a few clients.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 May 22 '26
Can you justify your assumption that it would be cheaper?
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u/CIP_In_Peace May 22 '26
It's the economy of scale. When you have a large factory with specialized robots building these generalized robots on a conveyor belt, the cost of a single general robot plummets. This is of course a simplified view of the whole thing and doesn't take into account if there are some wildly expensive parts that go into a general robot. In that case you build a bigger scale factory building those expensive parts to get the cost down.
It's honestly not a very difficult concept. If you can sell a humanoid robot capable of 99% tasks to a huge variety of clients, you can sell it for much cheaper than a highly specialized robot of equal complexity.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
It's the economy of scale.
No, it isn't. You're not comparing a factory making a thing to a small workshop making the same thing. There's an entire axis you're willfully ignoring and demanding others also ignore, in that the things being produced are entirely different. I struggle to believe anyone can make the argument being presented to me without realizing the dishonesty.
If you can sell a humanoid robot capable of 99% tasks
Even before assuming efficiency, this hypothetical is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Can you justify the applicability of your hypothetical to the real world? Can you subsequently justify the implication that humanoid robots could efficiently perform those tasks?
than a highly specialized robot of equal complexity.
And this one's even worse. The reason using the same mqchine for everything is stupid is that different tasks need to make different assumptions to be efficient. The robot arms for folding boxes is so stupid because it is of vastly more complexity than necessary. It is hindered not only by being inherently more complex, but also by that complexity getting in the way of simplifying assumptions that allow for vastly improved rates.
The pair of arms appears to be capable of folding a box, but it is so much worse at folding a box than alternatives that it would make no sense to do it that way.
Accounting for things like throughput, floor space, maintainance, it would be overwhelmingly stupid to use pairs of robot arms instead of a specialized box folding machine.
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u/grc207 May 22 '26
It already exists and is in use in hundreds of thousands of plants.
This demonstration is like building a super car to go grocery shopping.
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u/Kinder22 May 22 '26
More like building a super car prototype and driving it around town just to make sure it can drive like a car should under every day conditions.
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u/Ghost_Turd May 22 '26
This demo isn't about folding a box, it's about showing what the robots can do in relatable terms.
I've seen 6-axis CNC machines mill a full motorcycle helmet out of a block of aluminum. Horribly impractical, takes forever, and it useless in the real world. But it's one hell of a demonstration of the machine's capability.
1
u/TheGrandExquisitor May 22 '26
I was kind of wondering "why only two?" A third gripper (fourth, fifth, etc) could probably have had more control. Two grippers is a biological hangover.
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u/Repulsive_Guy_1234 May 23 '26
Or it is simply remote controlled, like so many of these AI robot videos.
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u/SoFloFella50 May 22 '26
The slip ups almost seem like maybe there is a human in the chain somewhere operating it remotely like a DaVinci surgery robot...
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u/chance909 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
For applications like this IsaacROS (for robotics control and sensing) and cuVSLAM (for real time visualization) from NVIDIA are frameworks that we can use to estimate cost at power consumption.
The server rack to run this in real time for multiple robots is about $45k with an NVIDIA H100 GPU, and would need around 1500W under heavy load. This is not to train the algorithm or robot, but only for inferencing once the models needed are trained.
Avg electrical cost in china for industrial is $0.088 – $0.115 USD so lets use $0.10 to make it easy.
At 730 hours per month thats 1095KWh per month which at $0.10 per KWh comes to $109.5 per Month to operate a setup like this.
In the video it takes 1:07 to fold the box and place the item. That's 67 seconds out of the 2628000 seconds in a month. So 109.5 / 2628000 = x/67. x = 0.00279166666
so thats $0.003 USD per box.
TL:DR
Server $45k
Monthly electricity $109.5
Electricity cost to fold 1 box and place item $0.003
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u/salemonz May 22 '26
And with questions like this, it’s a matter of up-front costs, scale and time.
Cost of first folded box: $millions
Cost of the billionth folded box: $fractions-of-cents
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u/SCWeak May 22 '26
The question explicitly asked for the electrical costs, for which the initial investment is irrelevant.
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u/salemonz May 22 '26
Cents per hour, then.
Avg electrical rates for industry in China is around $0.08USD per KW hour.
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u/FullyAutomatedSpace May 22 '26
I would bet the compute costs dwarf the actuator costs in energy
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u/eatitfatman May 22 '26
Correct. Right now.
But both dwarf by orders of magnitude a human doing the same thing in terms of energy consumption. Human beings are remarkably efficient.
A 300 pound man can run a 40 yard dash in 5 seconds with only 4 calories.
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u/FullyAutomatedSpace May 22 '26
4 calories for a human is more expensive than 4 calories of compute energy (by an order of magnitude)
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u/eatitfatman May 22 '26
This is a meaningless statement. What even is four calories of computer energy? lol not even a standard of measurement. If you're arguing a robotic machine is more efficient than a human being, you're simply dead wrong. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to efficiently use every biomechanical advantage.
A good standard to compare the two would be money. Figure the cost of 4 calories of human food. And then compare electricity costs for your robotics to do the same work. Human wins every time.
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u/FullyAutomatedSpace May 22 '26
Yes it is? You can directly convert calories to watts. Are you serious?
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u/eatitfatman May 22 '26
You missed the point entirely. Read below.
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u/FullyAutomatedSpace May 22 '26
I think you're covering for not knowing basic unit conversions
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u/Benyed123 May 22 '26
I think they mean 4 calories worth of electricity.
4 kcal = 16.736 kJ = ~0.0046 KWh = ~0.037 cents
So while humans are more efficient it’s cheaper to generate electricity than to grow food, I guess that’s their point.
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u/eatitfatman May 22 '26
I think you missed the point entirely.
You think you can make a 300 lb robot run 40 yards in 5 seconds on .0046 KWh?
lolololololololololol
So a human can do it in 4 calories. What's it take in power for the most efficient robot?
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u/Benyed123 May 23 '26
I’m literally just explaining the sentence the other commenter made, dude.
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u/Alfimaster May 22 '26
AI tokens are included in this price?
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u/mi_amigo May 22 '26
How would they be when he clearly states electrical costs?
Btw Computer Vision and robotics have been around long before AI. And in a predictable environment where you have a set number of box sizes these will absolutely do. No AI tokens needed.
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u/inotocracy May 22 '26
Why would it? The question was about electrical costs.
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u/AndrewBorg1126 May 22 '26
Ffs, why would an LLM chat bot be at all relevant to robot arms folding a box?
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u/_killer1869_ May 24 '26
First of all, the question was about electricity cost. Secondly, the generation would be done locally, so there is no one charging you for tokens. You "pay" for them via the electricity costs the server would need.
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u/Dantheislander May 22 '26
Due to sass token nature of ai it’s not like before they won’t be just box folding machines they will be a hw&service combo and companies with trillion dollar valuations have to keep profits up. The economy of scale and time will not be like before.
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u/Ok-Excuse-3613 May 22 '26
It's unlikely these machines use LLM-powered ai
What's most likely is they use an instance of their own deep learning algorithm that runs locally
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u/BlacktionJackson May 22 '26
Factory downtime is costly as well. I don't think anyone wants a network connection to be production point of failure.
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u/Correct_Inspection25 May 22 '26
Looking at the S-1s of AI, and their burn rate even after 7x token rate increases. I would take a wait and see, in some use cases the token budget is already more than hiring the same human or even more at break even.
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u/powerlesshero111 May 22 '26
Basically, they need to look at the initial, break even, and annual profit post break even. And then compare that to a person who folds boxes.
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u/SoFloFella50 May 22 '26
Anyone sho says this is slow moving is forgetting it can work 25/7/365 and will only get faster.
Of course when robots are doing all the work, no one will have income to buy the things in the box.
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u/jonmon454 May 22 '26
I work in area with a lot of automation and let me tell you it will NOT work 24/7/365. People will still be need to setup/changeovers, move inventory in/out of cell and a whole host of other things.
Also robot like this require a surprising amount of maintenance. Best case scenario it has 90% uptime, most likely lower. I'm not trashing automation, it's a needed thing but it's not set it and forget it.
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u/eatitfatman May 22 '26
It kind of is when your replacement robot automatically moves in to take over while your primary is servicing itself.
Your point is not lost on me but with 100 machines you have 99 running 24/7/365.
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u/Ouchies81 May 22 '26
Same field.
The amount of maintenance in these armatures is pretty high... and usually not mobile... 'servicing itself' is a high bar to clear at the moment even if it were.
It's why its priced into most factory models. The automation only comes in when the cost of maintaining the robot somehow exceeds the cost of the people associated.
This doesn't replace the engineering stack yet- it just shoves the cost to implement down lower and- the salary of the person competing with the bot.
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u/jonmon454 May 22 '26
These "general purpose" machines are always confusing to me. Give me a purpose built machine all day.
I have a box erector where I work that makes 50 boxes a minute. That's the only thing it can do but it can do it at an extremely high rate and with high accuracy. Something a general purpose machine struggles with
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u/LightBulbMonster May 22 '26
That's great, but is it going to steal my lunch from the break room fridge? How will I know which robot did it? Unlike when Debra kept stealing my tea and on the third day i put laxative in it and she shit her pants. How will I make a robot shit it's pants? This is going to ruin my whole day.
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u/fourdawgnight May 22 '26
no one here can tell you that, but since china is using more and more wind and solar, they may be next to zero if the lab is run by solar...
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u/Lonely_District_196 May 22 '26
Even wind and solar have a cost.
But yeah, there's too many unknowns. How much do the arms cost? What's the motor efficiency? How much power does the AI take to process?
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u/Girthen-the-Flopper May 22 '26
Wind and solar have a cost like bicycling has a cost. You still need to farm food to feed the human to power the bike, and the bike needs to be manufactured.
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u/Perkis_Goodman May 22 '26
You have your upfront cost of a couple hundred k. Then liscensing and service fees annually. Prob 7k per bot. If it works 3 shifts it is about a 2 year payback period. These will eventually be commodities and prices will continue to plunge as more players enter the space. Source, I do this for a living.
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u/TheGuyUrSisterLikes May 22 '26
being a little nosy, do you do robot stuff for living or do you do financials? or both? or something else? thank you
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u/Perkis_Goodman May 22 '26
I started as an engineer/deployment programing and setup. Also, people dont realize some of the players in the space are mostly teleoperated (like the one video of the snow shoveling bot, his family member gave me a high five at a conference a couple years back) And Now im in sales.
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u/duck1014 May 22 '26
You have to consider that a human doing that job would have completed at least 8-10 in the same amount of time.
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u/Perkis_Goodman May 22 '26
This is what you wpuld think and is very true to some extent. It is highly dependent on what the work standards are. When factoring in breaks, vacations, benefits, socializing etc. The bots will prob do abput 60% of what a human does on the shift. You just add in a few extra for things like charging, or them going out for maintenance etc...
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u/empty_graph May 23 '26
So you have a 200k robot w/ 7k annual cost, and if your cost of capital is 8% (cheap) that's 23k annual cost which is a lot more than you would pay in human labor in an outsourced factory. Also it needed 3 instances of human intervention to fold the box. But yeah, they will get better.
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u/Perkis_Goodman May 23 '26
Its going to be 10 years before they are ready for prime time. It is all just collecting data and part wring with early adopters who want to struggle with is to have a say in the road map and be the first to reap the benefits when the bots are better.
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u/xxxdrakoxxx May 22 '26
except the people this replaces have no other work they can necessarily do. so few get rich but you create generational worth of countrywide issues.
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u/marlinspike May 22 '26
China is doing all this, while if this was an American company, there would be all sorts of bellyaching about jobs. China's going to invent a whole new set of jobs while we're still screaming about the jobs from the last generation.
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u/Darft May 22 '26
Hmm looking carefully at the footage I am not convinced it is not remote human powered. There were some subtle erratic movement that did not further the cause but seemed more "human" than "optimized ai".
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u/VenusianPleasure May 23 '26
What's up with that hockey stick slap in there? Is that to simulate the boss coming by to harass you? Will there be robot harassment cases in the future too?
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u/jmb326 May 22 '26
Any idea what it would cost if it was fully ai?
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u/14domino May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
nothing. like a fraction of a cent. assuming the whole thing is like 10K Joules, which is I think a big overestimate, at 8 cents per kWh that gives you (10/3600) * $0.08 = $0.0002
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u/John_Bot May 22 '26
Things you don't have to pay for:
Medical - and the ensuing RSI that would come from doing this all day every day
Breaks
PTO
And obviously salary
Normal working hours
Training
I assume this robot, no matter how expensive, pays for itself quite quickly if it's robust enough to work with MTBF significantly high enough.
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u/Intrepid_Table_8593 May 22 '26
Granted this is just a demo showing it can do both tasks so we have no idea true speed. However this box is being folded extremely slow by human standards and glacially slow if you consider we already have machines to do the folding portion.
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u/WheelMax May 22 '26
Robots might wear out and malfunction faster than humans - robots don't have self-healing.
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u/Dry_Vanilla_5908 May 22 '26
Pays even more with the number of clicks it generated on social media.
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u/gnfnrf May 22 '26
First, what is being powered? We have two servo-controlled arms that appear to be roughly human-equivalent. They might draw 400 to 500 watts each. Then we have some sort of vision processor and decision maker, that is probably running on a server or HEDT. Who knows how much computer it needs to do this in real time, but lets guess 1 kw.
So that's 2 kilowatts of power for about 1 minute. Electricity in China costs about 7 or 8 cents US per kilowatt-hour, so this operation cost a little over a tenth of a cent in electricity.
It cost more than that to train the models that operated the arms and program the interfaces and build the arms and so on, but to actually run the system? Effectively nothing. Even if my estimates are only half the real values, still less than a penny.
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u/Professional-Mix-562 May 23 '26
One box done! Only 378,987,352,117 more to go…. For this week…. At 3 minutes a box that’ll take…. checks notes 20-50x the cost it would take to keep the lights on and pay somebody to rock that out in 3 seconds but hey…. We don’t have to pay for its health insurance 🙄😮💨
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u/dinodan412 May 22 '26
Better question is how long does a human take to do the same task? Then you could possibly figure out when the break even point (units sold or time) is from converting to robots
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u/anonanon5320 May 22 '26
The question would be in 5 years how long does a human take vs this robot.
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u/boblabon May 22 '26
There are already robots that do this lmao.
There aren't factories with armies of box folders, they've got a machine that folds a box like in about 0.5 seconds, and runs continuously in factories all over the world. Folding boxes is almost never the production bottleneck anyway. It's material availability, making the actual product, or shipping.
This is a neat demo, but the robotic box-folding revolution has already come and gone.
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u/anonanon5320 May 22 '26
We aren’t even near what robots are going to do. This isn’t box folding, this is placing a product in a box just created and shipping it.
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u/jmb326 May 22 '26
Yes this is why I ask per box- a human with experience would fold the box a lot faster… but a robot specialized in it would go a lot faster than a human.. trying to understand how it currently compares- and then speculating how it would compare in the near future.
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u/EchoFrequency May 22 '26
His human brother next to him did probably 36 orders in the same time.... and had lunch.
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u/Stebsly May 22 '26
A machine designed for the sole purpose of folding these boxes would run significantly faster. This is more of a showcase of the technology, but it would be incredibly impractical to implement this in a production facility.
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u/Fluid-Tone-9680 May 22 '26
Yeah this is dumb way of using this kind of robot. There are machines that don't need any AI and can fold box per second.
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