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¿Robot o humano?

Warehouse inventory counting

Cycle counter with a scanner and lift vs Autonomous inventory drone (RaaS)

Estimaciones modeladas por Whirrwork, no hechos. Metodología · Historial de aciertos

Humano · Al año153.903 US$Manual cycle counts
Robot · Al año66.321 US$Inventory drone as a service
Plazo de recuperación1 meses
Año de cruceyaBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

Estados Unidos · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Carga de trabajo
Supuesto

Pallet locations counted per month (e.g. 15,000 locations twice).

Supuesto

Hours per day the drone may fly.

Supuesto

Days per month.

Supuesto

Months per year.

Personal
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 53-7065.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Supuesto

Locations per person-hour with an order picker or reach truck for high bays.

Supuesto

Lift truck cost per counter-hour. Default 0 ignores it.

Robot
Supuesto

Locations per drone-hour.

Calculado Actel Robotics progressivelogistics.com

Corvus One small-DC quotes $2,500-$4,500/month; Langham reported about $4,000/month per Gather AI drone.

Supuesto

WMS integration and site setup.

Supuesto

Contract years.

Supuesto

Availability (charging).

Supuesto

Work lost to faults.

Supuesto

Locations that still need a person (unreadable labels, exceptions to resolve).

Supuesto

Staff minutes per drone-hour.

Supuesto

kWh per drone-hour.

Supuesto

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finanzas
Supuesto

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Supuesto

Years in the NPV comparison.

Supuesto

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Supuesto

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Supuesto

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Resultados

OpciónAl mesAl añoPer unit (location)Inversión inicialPlazo de recuperaciónBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humano Manual cycle counts Referencia 12.825 US$153.903 US$0,428 US$— — — —
Robot Inventory drone as a service 5527 US$66.321 US$0,184 US$5000 US$ 0.7 meses 21 %
Utilisation 64 %
 408.189 US$

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Inventory drone as a service5-year NPV vs baseline: Inventory drone as a serviceWorkloadlow value: 5000 → -79.981 US$high value: 150000 → 2.233.558 US$Human output per hourlow value: 30 → 1.006.597 US$high value: 120 → 108.985 US$Hourly wagelow value: 14.36 → 290.975 US$high value: 21.54 → 525.403 US$Robot output per hourlow value: 80 → 224.545 US$high value: 300 → 414.491 US$Human equipment cost per hourlow value: 0 → 408.189 US$high value: 8 → 578.312 US$Work that stays humanlow value: 0.05 → 440.733 US$high value: 0.3 → 278.010 US$Employer on-cost multiplierlow value: 1.2790000000000001 → 346.670 US$high value: 1.579 → 469.708 US$Subscription per robot per mo…low value: 2500 → 457.507 US$high value: 4500 → 358.870 US$Financing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → 440.556 US$high value: 0.12 → 369.841 US$408.189 US$0low valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimaciones modeladas por Whirrwork, no hechos.

ChartCosto humano por unidad (Base), Costo del robot por unidad (Base), Costo del robot por unidad (Robots: avance rápido), Costo del robot por unidad (Robots: avance lento). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 US$0,10 US$0,20 US$0,30 US$0,40 US$2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / locationscenario rangeCosto humano por unidad (Base)Costo del robot por unidad (Base)Costo del robot por unidad (Robot…Costo del robot por unidad (Robot…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estima…

Año de cruce: ya

What the spreadsheet misses

Seguridad
Fewer people raised on lifts to read labels at height.
Calidad
More frequent counts; accuracy depends on labels.
Flexibilidad
People also fix the discrepancies they find.
Edge cases
Blocked aisles, shrink-wrap glare and missing labels.
Customer experience
Fewer stockouts from phantom inventory.
Jobs and redeployment
Walmart dropped shelf-scanning robots in 2020 partly because staff could do the checks during other work: count what your people already do.
Regulación
Indoor flight is usually unregulated; workplace safety rules apply.

Relacionado

Fuentes de esta página

Las notas y las fuentes están en inglés; la versión en inglés es la de referencia.

  1. Corvus One inventory drone, small distribution centre (<150,000 sq ft): about $2,500-$4,500 per month RaaS Actel Robotics, 2026 · vendor
  2. Langham Logistics pays about $4,000 per month per Gather AI inventory drone Indianapolis Business Journal via Progressive Logistics, 2026-10
  3. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  4. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  5. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  6. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  7. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  8. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  9. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  10. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  11. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  12. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  13. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013