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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

> her are a couple of reasons for this. This first is that these problems are extremely hard to solve. And this is not true just in terms of algorithms, but also in terms of hardware. A humanoid robot is as complex as, if not more complex than, an automobile. Currently, humanoid robots go for $500,000 a pop. Even after economies of scale it's hard for me to imagine that getting below $50,000 — much less $5,000, which is probably the price range that makes them viable as anything other than a novelty for wealthy people.

I'm curious why you think that is the case? What is so expensive about humanoid robots? I don't disagree with you, I have no knowledge on the matter, i'm just curious as it doesn't comport with my intuition.

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Humanoids, in particular, have a lot of moving parts. The human arm has 7 degrees of freedom. The hand has something like 21. Legs, 7. Feet, somewhere between 3 and six. That's a lot of motors, gears, motor controller boards, joint angle sensors, force-torque sensors, etc. Humans have ubiquitous sensing. Tactile sensing of up to 1000 sensors per square inch of skin. Force sensing at every joint. High bandwidth, highly efficient actuators (muscles).

Humanoids are just extremely complicated systems with a lot of moving parts that require very high reliability, along with a metric ton of sensors and the wiring harness needed to support all of it.

For reference, a standard brushless DC motor that is reliable enough, strong enough, and precise enough for use in a robot will retail for around $1000. Just for the motor. And you need at least 30 of them, probably more.

Not to mention that humans run on food, produce little waste heat, are portable, and regenerate many tissues as needed for decades until we enter EOL.

its 100% in R&D. Real commodity hardware is sold at ~3x raw material cost, with R&D amortized over millions of units and very long period. Every time you see something made in china and go "how the hell can this be so cheap" is seeing real commodity price, with no R&D and middleman margins. People will argue about quality, by writing replies on keyboards that cost $5 to make in China, and clicking send with $0.2 BoYue microswitch in their $70(retail) mouse.

You could in theory make 500K robots at 5K if you give up any notion of recouping development cost by tackling ridiculous margins, and instead concentrate on moving millions of units.

Why aren't cars $5k then? Heck most basic motorcycles are $7k plus and they're well understood and very simple.

Cherry QQ (chevy spark copy) is ~$5K in china, being a ripoff removed R&D cost.

Great you literally cherry picked the lowest possible example for your argument. So after 100 years of development and ip theft yes the least featured model might be at that price level. I concede the argument. I look forward to getting my cheap robot in 100 years on the libertarian colony of vega

Cheapest "cars" in China start under $1K, Cherry QQ is actually decent in comparison. Want different example? How about micro controllers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rixo78hv_lw 3 cent in Asia, cheapest US based manufacturer offerings start at 30 cent.

As a data point. The original Valkyrie cost ~12.5 million. Thats hardware and software dev over about 3 years. I'm not positive about the subsequent copies, but I've heard they're in million to 2 million.

Not the OP but in my experience with lab robotics, locomotion and sensing are the primary problems, as broad as that is. Compared to electrical systems, the human muscular and nervous system are extremely sensitive, low mass, and low volume. The dexterity needed to do everything from assemble electronics to fold clothing while sensing the subtleties of cotton versus synthetic threads is simply not possible with electronics while fitting in a reasonable size.

For example, just the motors, rotary encoders, and joints of a 6 degree of freedom robotic arm capable of lifting 20 kg (with a specialized tool, no hands or jointed fingers!) are 2-3 times the size of the average human arm without any of the sensing capabilities or dexterity. Beating a single human hand in pipetting at speed, for simple vertical movements, takes up even more space with the xyz ballscrews.

Obviously biological systems are much more limited in repeatability, endurance, compliance and so on, but those are the trade offs we get with technology.

Maybe on day we'll get artificial muscles and skin but that is all a long ways off and it might only ever be available to super rich.

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