RoboROI — what a humanoid robot really costs to own

Choose a robot and describe the work it would do. The calculator compares three options over the number of years you pick: buying the robots, renting them on a subscription, or carrying on with the staff you have now. It shows what each would cost in total, whether and when the robots would pay for themselves, and every cost figure it used with its source, so you can check the numbers rather than take them on trust.

Your scenario

Country Every country the calculator has published labour-cost data for is listed. 3 of the 4 (Germany, France, United Kingdom) can't be fully costed yet. If you pick one, the results page tells you which figure is missing instead of filling the gap with a guess.

Industry Decides which job the robot is compared with, and so which wage is used. Each industry has its own published wage for that job.

Robot Every robot in the calculator's data is listed, and none is chosen for you. A robot marked "no published price" can't be costed, because its maker doesn't publish one and the calculator won't make one up.

Number of robots

Shifts per day Up to 3 shifts of 8 hours, which is the whole day. How much of that time a robot is actually working, rather than charging or being repaired, is its uptime. That is an assumption, and it is shown with the results.

How productive a robot is, compared with a person How much of a person's work one robot gets done in the same time. Nobody has published a reliable figure for this yet, so you choose a rough setting rather than type an exact number. It is the most debatable assumption in the calculator, and the amount of human work the robots replace goes up and down in direct proportion to it.

How many years to compare Between 1 and 10 years. Beyond about five years, the assumptions about the hardware mean less and less, because humanoid robots are such a new product.

Include the hidden costs of employing people Adds one extra percentage to the cost of your staff to cover staff turnover, absence, workers' compensation and HR administration. It is off by default and unverified: the figure has no published source, and switching it on makes the robots look better value. If you switch it on, the results page says so and shows the warning that goes with it.