With recent achievements in technological advances, it’s not too difficult to believe that they are going to open a hotel in which the receptionists will be robots. The 72-room Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, will be attended by 10 humanoid robots, able to greet and hold intelligent conversations with guests, tend to the reception, transport luggage and clean the rooms. They will be capable of speaking Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English and they will look like a young Japanese woman. They imitate human gestures, they are capable of establishing visual contact with guests, as well as understanding and responding to the human body language and tone of voice. The robots were developed by the University of Osaka and constructed by the robotic company Kokoro, with the first version dating back to 2003.
The hotel will be located within a theme park inspired by a 17th century Dutch establishment, Huis Ten Bosch. According to its president, Hideo Sawada, it will be “the most efficient hotel in the world”. The robots will not be the only technologically advanced element in the hotel. The room doors will open by means of facial recognition, guests will be able to request services via tablet and the rooms’ temperature will be adjusted using a radiation panel that detects body heat in each of the rooms.
Nowadays, high-tech advances must be explored to see what they can provide for guests and therefore keep a step ahead of competitors. In the future, developers hope that machines will be able to manage around 90% of hotel services.
The hotel plans to open in July this year, and we will be able to witness the beginning of future human-robot interaction.