The Japanese are at it again and have made another first in the world of robotics. July 17 2015 saw the announcement of the . The Henn-na Hotel (which is translated as ‘strange hotel’), is part of the Huis Ten Borsh theme park in Japan and was designed by Kaiima corporation, Kawazoe lab and and the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo .
The hotel has robots stationed at the front desk to help customers check in and check out, robot porters programmed to carry luggage to and from rooms and robots employed in the cloak room. Henn-na robot hotel also has cleaning robots programmed to clean the hotel on their own accord and small bags can be handed over to some robot to help stow them away in secure lockers. Infact, according to the hotel, it is possible to hold “friendly” conversations with the robots as they go about their duties.
While I’m excited to see how well these machines do their jobs, I also can’t help but think just how the world of work is being disrupted by all the new technologies being deployed to do our jobs more quickly and efficiently. It seems to me like each of us will do well to keep thinking “what would I do next if my job were taken over by a robot?”
See video below:
