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Robô ou humano?

Warehouse inventory counting

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

Estimativas modeladas pela Whirrwork, não fatos. Metodologia · Histórico de acertos

Humano · Por anoUS$ 153.903Manual cycle counts
Robô · Por anoUS$ 66.321Inventory drone as a service
Prazo de retorno1 meses
Ano da viradajáBase-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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Volume de trabalho
Premissa

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

Premissa

Hours per day the drone may fly.

Premissa

Days per month.

Premissa

Months per year.

Pessoas
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).

Premissa

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

Premissa

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

Robô
Premissa

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.

Premissa

WMS integration and site setup.

Premissa

Contract years.

Premissa

Availability (charging).

Premissa

Work lost to faults.

Premissa

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

Premissa

Staff minutes per drone-hour.

Premissa

kWh per drone-hour.

Premissa

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

Finanças
Premissa

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

Premissa

Years in the NPV comparison.

Premissa

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

Premissa

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

Premissa

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

OpçãoPor mêsPor anoPer unit (location)Investimento inicialPrazo de retornoBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humano Manual cycle counts Referência US$ 12.825US$ 153.903US$ 0,428— — — —
Robô Inventory drone as a service US$ 5.527US$ 66.321US$ 0,184US$ 5.000 0.7 meses 21%
Utilisation 64%
 US$ 408.189

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 → -US$ 79.981high value: 150000 → US$ 2.233.558Human output per hourlow value: 30 → US$ 1.006.597high value: 120 → US$ 108.985Hourly wagelow value: 14.36 → US$ 290.975high value: 21.54 → US$ 525.403Robot output per hourlow value: 80 → US$ 224.545high value: 300 → US$ 414.491Human equipment cost per hourlow value: 0 → US$ 408.189high value: 8 → US$ 578.312Work that stays humanlow value: 0.05 → US$ 440.733high value: 0.3 → US$ 278.010Employer on-cost multiplierlow value: 1.2790000000000001 → US$ 346.670high value: 1.579 → US$ 469.708Subscription per robot per mo…low value: 2500 → US$ 457.507high value: 4500 → US$ 358.870Financing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → US$ 440.556high value: 0.12 → US$ 369.841US$ 408.1890low 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. Estimativas modeladas pela Whirrwork, não fatos.

ChartCusto humano por unidade (Base), Custo do robô por unidade (Base), Custo do robô por unidade (Robôs: avanço rápido), Custo do robô por unidade (Robôs: avanço lento). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.US$ 0,00US$ 0,10US$ 0,20US$ 0,30US$ 0,402026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / locationscenario rangeCusto humano por unidade (Base)Custo do robô por unidade (Base)Custo do robô por unidade (Robôs:…Custo do robô por unidade (Robôs:…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/inventory-scanning/). Modelled estima…

Ano da virada: já

What the spreadsheet misses

Segurança
Fewer people raised on lifts to read labels at height.
Qualidade
More frequent counts; accuracy depends on labels.
Flexibilidade
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.
Regulamentação
Indoor flight is usually unregulated; workplace safety rules apply.

Relacionados

Fontes desta página

As notas e as fontes estão em inglês; a versão em inglês é a referência.

  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