Hey, I could probably answer this one without needing to read the article, as I have literal TONS of robots in my solar facility.
You know those nice multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Japanese robotic arms? We ditched them because it was just as simple to build our own robotic arms with basic framing and motors.
At a literal tenth of the price ($70K for our Kawasaki armature, $7K for our hand-built array of framing and motors with vacuum lines for picking up and placing solar cells.)
You know those nice multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Japanese robotic arms? We ditched them because it was just as simple to build our own robotic arms with basic framing and motors.
At a literal tenth of the price ($70K for our Kawasaki armature, $7K for our hand-built array of framing and motors with vacuum lines for picking up and placing solar cells.)
Our in-house robot runs faster as well.