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World's First Robot Hotel Fires Half of Its Robot Staff (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The world's first hotel "staffed by robots" has culled half of its steely eyed employees, because they're rubbish and annoy the guests. "Our hotel's advanced technologies, introduced with the aim of maximizing efficiency, also add to the fun and comfort of your stay," the Henn na Hotel boasted on its website. It's where multilingual female robots staff the reception desk. Guests are checked in using face recognition. Robot concierges carry your luggage. Robots cleaned and mixed drinks. A voice activated robot doll is on hand at night while you sleep.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the room doll interpreted snoring as a request it couldn't understand, waking guests continually through the night to rephrase. "The two robot luggage carriers are out of use because they can reach only about two dozen of the more than 100 rooms in the hotel. They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings," the paper reported. "They were really slow and noisy, and would get stuck trying to go past each other," lamented one guest. The concierge and the room doll have now been removed.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the room doll interpreted snoring as a request it couldn't understand, waking guests continually through the night to rephrase. "The two robot luggage carriers are out of use because they can reach only about two dozen of the more than 100 rooms in the hotel. They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings," the paper reported. "They were really slow and noisy, and would get stuck trying to go past each other," lamented one guest. The concierge and the room doll have now been removed.
I have a Rumba. It does its jobs and keeps my floor clean, but it isn't as good as if I were to do it myself. As I can vacuum my whole house in about 30 minutes, while the Rumba just does the first floor in about an hour (and misses spots). But what it is good at is the fact that it does this scheduled daily. Where I only have the time to do this weekly.
My Roomba broke recently (and I'll be getting a new one). And that is exactly why Roomba (and probably other brands or robotic vacuum cleaner) is awesome. It does not do the job perfectly, but it can do it twice a day and take ME only about 2 minutes of my time. So my floor is (well, was) perfectly cleaned at any time because any spot had been vacuumed in the previous 48 hours.
I don't have time to do this myself. And I won't be paying someone to vacuum my entire house every other day.
Regarding the robots that they were using; it sounds like the robots were badly built, weren't waterproof and the robots were not equipped to operate in that particular hotel, and had not been tested in real operating conditions. It is a problem of bad engineering and not a problem with the underlying robot technology. There is no fundamental problem with a robot cart you put luggage in, push room number in, and that drives there.