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Once you have a good synthetic muscle to make your android out of, you can eliminate a lot of the wasted weight caused by our current clunky mechanical systems I previously brought up. This means you can focus more internal space/weight on power storage making a 70-80lb (31-36kg) lithium ion battery far more reasonable than in most android designs to date. This gives you about 22-25 kW/hr of power storage meaning that the android could actually perform about 2 days of continuous activity, 10 days of idle activity, or a couple of months fully powered down but with the battery in between needing to be recharged.

Once you have a good synthetic muscle to make your android out of, you can eliminate a lot of the wasted weight caused by our current clunky mechanical systems I previously brought up. This means you can focus more internal space/weight on power storage making a 70-80lb (31-36kg) lithium ion battery far more reasonable than in most android designs to date. This gives you about 22-25 kW/hr of power storage meaning that the android could actually perform about 2 days of continuous activity, 10 days of idle activity, or a couple of months fully powered down but with the battery in.

For starters, just standing or sitting will still consume some energy. It takes energy hold an electric motor in place against the resistance of gravity. It takes energy to perform the micro adjustments to rebalance your body when trying to stay upright against changes in the environment. It takes energy for your robot to run all of the cameras, microphones, gyros, pressure sensors, and switches required for it to understand its environment and position in space. That said, these are all relatively small expenditures compared to what it takes to run a robot brain.

The problem with robots is that they don't think nearly as efficiently as we do. The human brain a true neural network, but modern robots use linear digital networks to simulate neural networks which is a grossly inefficient way of doing it. So, the power it takes a robot to process it's inputs is higher than that of a human brain.

So, to make an android able to do human things as efficiently as a human, you first need a fibrous material that contracts when electrically stimulated. There has been a significant amount of research in recent years studying Electroactive polymers (EAPs) and Shape-Memory Alloys (SMAs) to replicate the way that muscle fibres contract, but these technologies are still mostly in the experimental phase of implementation. But if you want to write a story about androids with human levels of efficiency, saying that they use EAP or SMA based synthetic muscles, is going to be very plausible.

The last efficiency issue is the battery, but this is more of a non-issue than most people give it credit for. People like to talk about how much more efficiently bio-chemical energy can be stored than using batteries, but batteries come with the advantage of not needing any digestive system to support it. So, going back to our 190lb human, you are looking at about 25-35lb (11-16kg) of digestive organs and feces before you even get to any actual energy storage whereas all an android needs to recharge is some kind of power socket. Add in about 45lb (20kg) of body fat, and an average, healthy BMI, 190lb human body devotes 70-80lb (31-36kg) to its power system.

Once you have a good synthetic muscle to make your android out of, you can eliminate a lot of the wasted weight caused by our current clunky mechanical systems I previously brought up. This means you can focus more internal space/weight on power storage making a 70-80lb (31-36kg) lithium ion battery far more reasonable than in most android designs to date. This gives you about 22-25 kW/hr of power storage meaning that the android could actually perform about 2 days of continuous activity or 10 days of idle time between needing to be recharged.

For starters, just standing or sitting will still consume some energy. It takes energy hold an electric motor in place against the resistance of gravity. It takes energy to perform the micro adjustments to rebalance your body when trying to stay upright against changes in the environment. It takes energy for your robot to run all of the cameras, microphones, gyros, pressure sensors, and switches required for it to understand its environment and position in space.

There is also all of the power lost to induction currents. Electricity does not just stop flowing because you turn off a switch, the switch creates an air gap that makes the electricity flow much more slowly. Even if you turn an average robot completely off, if you do not unplug the battery, it's charge will run out within a few weeks as electricity jumps the gap creating by the power switch.

There is also the problem with robots that they don't think nearly as efficiently as we do. The human brain a true neural network, but modern robots use linear digital networks to simulate neural networks which is a grossly inefficient way of doing it. So, the power it takes a robot to process it's inputs is higher than that of a human brain. So, if you want a robot to be physically in standby, but still processing its environment, it will use a lot more thinking power than a human does.

To make an android able to do human things as efficiently as a human, you first need a fibrous material that contracts when electrically stimulated. There has been a significant amount of research in recent years studying Electroactive polymers (EAPs) and Shape-Memory Alloys (SMAs) to replicate the way that muscle fibres contract, but these technologies are still mostly in the experimental phase of implementation. But if you want to write a story about androids with human levels of efficiency, saying that they use EAP or SMA based synthetic muscles, is going to be very plausible.

The last efficiency issue is the battery, but this is more of a non-issue than most people give it credit for. People like to talk about how much more efficiently bio-chemical energy can be stored than using batteries, but batteries come with some meaningful advantages to. Most notably: they don't need a digestive system to support it. So, going back to our 190lb human, you are looking at about 25-35lb (11-16kg) of digestive organs and feces before you even get to any actual energy storage whereas all an android needs to recharge is some kind of power socket. Add in about 45lb (20kg) of body fat at an average healthy BMI, and a 190lb human body devotes 70-80lb (31-36kg) to its power system.

Once you have a good synthetic muscle to make your android out of, you can eliminate a lot of the wasted weight caused by our current clunky mechanical systems I previously brought up. This means you can focus more internal space/weight on power storage making a 70-80lb (31-36kg) lithium ion battery far more reasonable than in most android designs to date. This gives you about 22-25 kW/hr of power storage meaning that the android could actually perform about 2 days of continuous activity, 10 days of idle activity, or a couple of months fully powered down but with the battery in between needing to be recharged.

The problem with robots is that they don't think nearly as efficiently as we do. The human brain a true neural network, but modern robots use linear digital networks to simulate neural networks which is a grossly inefficient way of doing it. So, the power it takes a robot to see, hear, and process it's inputs is almost an order of magnitude less efficient than all of a human's idle processes combine.

For starters, just standing or sitting will still consume some energy. It takes energy hold an electric motor in place against the resistance of gravity. It takes energy to perform the micro adjustments to rebalance your body when trying to stay upright against changes in the environment. It takes energy for your robot to run all of the cameras, microphones, gyros, pressure sensors, and switches required for it to understand its environment and position in space. That said, these are all relatively small expenditures compared to what it takes to run a robot brain.

The problem with robots is that they don't think nearly as efficiently as we do. The human brain a true neural network, but modern robots use linear digital networks to simulate neural networks which is a grossly inefficient way of doing it. So, the power it takes a robot to process it's inputs is higher than that of a human brain.