Yes, your "fundamental point" is what I'm getting at. I'm surprised that robots are still more expensive than humans for so many applications.

I know that the McDonalds near me pays up to $14/hr because the rich snotty teenagers here don't want to work at McDonalds and the immigrants have to travel from far away.

The McDonalds is open over 6500 hours a year. It just blows my mind that there is still a person hired to flip hamburgers. It's not like it (or brick laying) is a computationally difficult task. I can understand figuring out which end of my sheets in the pile on the floor goes on which end of the bed is a tad harder, but bricks and burgers come stacked neatly and follow the same repetitive process over and over again.

Then again, if stores follow the customer-can-do-it-themselves model of airline check-in kiosks and self-checkout lanes, maybe we'll be flipping our own burgers in the future?

Granted, the articulated general-purpose robot in the photo is expensive, but many purpose built robots (like Roomba, the pool cleaner, or the lawn mower) are not.

RE: MAKE: Blog: Robotic brick laying system ensures light and airflow to plants