It was only a matter of time before the robots would start taking over…hotels.
As robotics become more sophisticated, one theme park in Japan is gearing up to launch a hotel operated by an all-robot staff.
The theme park, Huis Ten Bosch, located in Japan's Nagasaki Prefecture, will open Henn-na Hotel on July 17. Included at the hotel: robots that act as anything from receptionists to porters, servicing guests and completing tasks such as running an item up to your room or cleaning.
There will be three "actroids," or robots with a human likeness, that will act as receptionists and be able to carry on intelligent conversations, per CNN. There will also be four service and porter robots and a variety of other bots that scuttle around to tend to matters.
Henn-na Hotel, which will be promoted with the slogan "A Commitment for Evolution," will also use facial recognition technology to open guestroom doors. Air conditioning will be replaced by a radiation panel that detects body heat and adjusts the temperature accordingly. The hotel will also rely heavily on solar power and other energy-saving power sources to keep costs down and be more environmentally conscious.
"We will make the most efficient hotel in the world," Huis Ten Bosch President Hideo Sawada said at a news conference, via The Japan Times. "In the future, we'd like to have more than 90 percent of hotel services operated by robots."
The first phase of the two-story hotel will be unveiled on July 17, featuring 72 rooms. The second phase will include another 72 rooms and is scheduled to be completed in 2016.
That's not all. Sawada said the company hopes to build another 1,000 similar robot-guided hotels around the world in the future, via Nikkei News.
Robots and artificial intelligence figure to be more visible and really start to take off this year. There have already been significant developments with self-driving cars. Relatively inexpensive drones are also popping up more than ever as travelers explore the world and test out their photography and filming skills.
As filmmaker Morgan Spurlock noted in a CNN clip, the human-like actroids can come off as a bit unnerving right now with their shifty eyes and their somewhat mechanical movements, but this is just the start of the robot revolution, mind you. As technology develops and more ideas come into play, it's only a matter of time before robots start looking, talking and acting more like us humanoids.
Who knows, there may even come a point when it will be hard to distinguish robot from human.
But, hey, as long as they are helping us and not attempting to rule the world, we may even develop friendships with them like Joaquin Phoenix did in the futuristic film "Her."
After all, humans tend to like it when they are served food and pampered. Soon enough, those monotonous household chores may be a thing of the past, too (like, say, laundry).
To book a room at Henn-na Hotel, guests will have to bid, with the highest bidders securing a room. Bidding starts at around $60 for a single room and will be capped off at $153. Superior and deluxe rooms cost more.
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