We’ve all had one of those hotel stays where the staff seem a bit offish and devoid of warmth. Ask the simplest request and it’s scowls and grumbles – humans really can be the worst.
You might then want to check out Japan’s Henn-na Hotel, a hotel manned almost completely by robots. The clue is the name of the hotel , translated loosely as ‘Strange Hotel’, where initial cost-cutting measures morphed into an attempt to create the wackiest hotel ever seen.
Mashable describes the experience as follows:
Upon check-in, guests will be greeted by multi-lingual humanoid…Other robots in the lobby greet visitors, serve coffee and act as concierge. Robots bring the guests’ luggage to their rooms, which, by the way, are opened by face-recognition technology.
A Aldebaran robotic concierge handles guests’ questions at the Strange Hotel.
The receptionist robot that speaks in English is a vicious-looking dinosaur, and the one that speaks Japanese is a female humanoid with blinking lashes. “If you want to check in, push one,” the dinosaur says. The visitor still has to punch a button on the desk, and type in information on a touch panel screen.
A small robot in each room controls lighting and other features by voice command.
The hotel, located in Sasebo, opens today. I think I might let them work out a few of the bugs before I consider going anywhere near the place, I imagine this is something of a hacker’s dream.
[source:mashable]
