In the context of the development of modern management technologies, there is a problem of estimating labor costs in the design and development of new technical devices and robotic complexes. This paper analyzes the current state of the art on the issue of estimating labor costs in the development of complex technical systems. A mathematical model for calculating labor costs is proposed. Various approaches and methods for calculating the cost of production (modernization) of new complex technical devices in the process of mass production are presented. The analysis of the works showed the ambiguity of approaches to the assessment of labor costs. The main work on the assessment of labor costs is related to research activities, which are considered as a complex of interrelated works, which include work on the search, selection and substantiation of promising conceptual ideas, fundamental and applied research. Based on the analysis of evaluation methods, the paper proposes a combined approach to estimating labor costs in the development of complex technical devices. This approach implies carrying out a planned calculation of the project's labor costs in a unit of measurement – man-hours. The adopted measurement measure is associated with a detailed decomposition into types of work and selected specialists of various qualifications for the development of a complex technical device based on the type of biomorphic systems.