Bring On the Boring Robots

malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke's 'butler bots' are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2,000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke's CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone's door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines.

Comments

We already have these

[HalAtWork]

We pretty much already have special purpose robots, it's just nobody refers to them as such. Is "robot" going to become the new buzzword used to sell us on these devices? I already have a "robot" that opens my garage door when I'm near, a "robot" that chews up the food in my sink, I use a "robot" to deposit/withdraw money at the bank, my neighbor has a "robot" that brings him up in his wheelchair to his landing...

Re:We already have these

[Anonymous Coward]

>> We pretty much already have special purpose robots, it's just nobody refers to them as such
That's because they're NOT robots, they're machines.
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-literal-difference-between-a-machine-and-a-robot

No tipping required

[Ksevio]

And the best part is the robot doesn't sit around waiting for a tip and look impatient when you look for your wallet.