REAL LIFE IMITATES FED: DROID HOTEL
by Hazed
A new droid hotel has just opened in Japan. That’s not a hotel where droids go to stay, instead it’s for humans – but all the staff are robots.
The Henn na (which translates as Weird hotel) is in Nagasaki, and it costs 9,000 yen to stay a night ($73) – that’s a bargain compared to normal hotel prices in the country. Obviously having no human staff eliminates wage costs, and the park’s founder also says it could improve efficiency.
Humans who enter the hotel are greeted at the checkin desk by a variety of automated receptionists – including a robot dinosaur which speaks English. There’s also a Japanese-speaking female android. The robots use facial recognition technology, and guests type their information into a touch panel.
A robot porter takes your cases to your room – you just tap your room number into its digital panel.
Once in your room, a cute little robot concierge takes voice commands and will turn the lights on and off, tell you the time and give you the weather forecast.
It certainly sounds like the kind of thing people in Fed DataSpace would take in their stride, but in the real world, I wonder whether it will catch on as more than just a gimmick. I would also be concerned about how strong its security is – how easily could hackers tamper with the droids to cause mischief, or get themselves a free room?
