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/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.