Comment by ModernMech
14 days ago
It's a misallocation of resources. Actual roboticists can go their entire careers without touching hardware like that, and if they want it they have to spend years writing grants to get ONE to split between three other researchers and a dozen grad students.
Meanwhile a guy who made a fortune in tech optimizing ad placements (not saying that's OP) can pick one up on a lark, and as you said it usually ends up in the garage next to other expensive toys like an $80k truck or autonomous Tesla. Also the $80k trucks are a great example because they're more of a status symbol, just like the robots will be.
Of course they used go their whole careers without seeing these robots, they've only been around for three years and used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
These days, $30k is cheap enough for a university lab and so a lot of them have picked up these models.
I still don’t understand why ads are so profitable. Seems to be one of the few real business models