Re:Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for...
by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:14AM
(#27589529)
The high cost components of a robot like this are: Actuators, motor drivers, batteries, compute, sensors, and mechanical components.
I did not reference SPOTs specs but it must be full of low volume custom parts (expensive). They are honestly probably selling them at little to no profit as $70k is about how much a low volume custom research robot might cost in parts. But I could see them getting SPOT down to $20k in parts, but then you still need to do assembly which is going to be very hands on with technicians doing assembly and test engineers checking components. And one could imagine they'd like it if they could manage some profit. IDK it all adds up robots are super expensive.
I did not reference SPOTs specs but it must be full of low volume custom parts (expensive). They are honestly probably selling them at little to no profit as $70k is about how much a low volume custom research robot might cost in parts. But I could see them getting SPOT down to $20k in parts, but then you still need to do assembly which is going to be very hands on with technicians doing assembly and test engineers checking components. And one could imagine they'd like it if they could manage some profit. IDK it all adds up robots are super expensive.