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Comment by s_dev | Hacker News Reader

Moving building materials "the last mile" in places like Swiss mountains where they currently hire helicopters to move such materials.

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Max payload is only 31lbs unfortunately

In a fleet, or at least all the time, that's not so bad. Get 6 running, shifts of 2, you can haul quite a bit in a week with some electricity.

At that price point what is it better than? A human can carry significantly more for a fraction of the price. 31 lbs is essentially nothing.

A robot that works a 1% the rate is still cost effective if he's 0.9% of the price. Those helicopters are hired at hundreads of thousands of Euros per day and billed for minutes -- they can lift a lot of the materials in a single trip. Probably will have to wait for a more heavy duty Spot though for this use case.

a human porter can carry 30lbs and hike through any mountain trails that this robot can - it'd be a lot cheaper to hire some people than to buy a $70k robot. people can also operate for longer than 90 minutes.

the helicopters are necessary because they need to carry large loads that can't be divided up, which a robot with a 30lb capacity can't help with.

> hike through any mountain trails this robot can

With improvements in programming, that's not necessarily true considering they have four legs.

> people can also operate for longer than 90 minutes.

Note that the 90 minutes is without payload. With payload it's likely much shorter.

They could carry little barrels of brandy to reanimate distressed travelers, like St. Bernards.

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.220510.html

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/20908/why-are-st-bernard...

Maybe little flasks of dex, apropos of today's covid treatment news.

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