How many hours of an 8-hour shift can a battery-powered Unitree G1 actually work, and does it change whether it pays?
research/buildbot-shift
How many hours of an 8-hour shift can a battery-powered Unitree G1 work? One 421 Wh pack gives 4.7 h; two packs and one charger give 7.7 h; above about 300 W the charger is the limit, and pack logistics move the cost break-even only from 2.42 to 2.27 to 2.46 (draw swept, not measured).
What it found
Event model of battery swaps for a Unitree G1: 421.2 Wh packs (9000 mAh at 46.8 V), a 270 W charger and the vendor's “about 2 hours” runtime, which implies about 211 W. One pack gives 4.7 h of work in an 8 h shift; two packs and one charger give 7.7 h, and a third pack adds nothing. Above about 300 W the charger is the bottleneck (3 packs for 7 h at 300 W, 4 at 400 W). Fed into buildbot-cost, pack wear and extra packs move the G1 break-even slowdown only from 2.42 to 2.27–2.46, so battery logistics are a scheduling detail rather than the deciding cost, and put the robot at 1,200–1,900 h/yr. The draw is back-calculated from a vendor claim and swept 150–400 W, not measured; swap time, usable fraction, charger efficiency and pack cycle life are assumed.
A figure from its own output
Paper, code and results
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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.