When will humanoid robots be available to buy?
I've been watching all these videos of humanoid robots lately - Optimus, Figure, Atlas, all of them. Really fascinating stuff.
But here's what I can't figure out. When will any of these actually be something a regular person can buy? Not a company, just... someone like me who thinks it would be genuinely useful to have one around the house.
I see Tesla talking about Optimus and saying it could cost around $20-30k eventually. But "eventually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Are we talking 2 years? 5 years? 10?
And what about the other companies? Is anyone actually selling these to consumers yet, or is it all just factory pilots and demos?
3 Replies
Consumer sales are probably further out than most people think. The $20-30k Tesla number gets thrown around but that's aspirational pricing - current unit costs are likely 5-10x that.
Unitree is selling their G1 for around $16k but it's more of a research/hobbyist platform than something you'd actually use around the house.
Best guess? Maybe 3-5 years before anything genuinely useful hits the consumer market at a reasonable price point.
The pricing question is interesting because even if they get manufacturing costs down, who's actually going to buy one? A $25k robot that can fold laundry and maybe carry groceries is a tough sell when you can hire someone for way less.
Fair points. I guess I was thinking more long-term - like once they can actually do a range of useful tasks reliably. But sounds like that's still a ways off.