From Engadget:
Japan's first robot-staffed hotel opens this week and we just got the full tour. While the main attraction may be the bordering-on-human receptionist (left) and the English-speaking dinosaur (er, right), the hotel has a whole family of robots performing varying degrees of useful work. Think: room service and a luggage porter, with one familiar face taking up duties as a bilingual concierge.
No HAL or Red Queen, but there is a Dinosaur that speaks English. I'm not too keen on the whole fake human as robot. I wouldn't mind a Wall-E or even the Dinosaur robot, but that female robot worker gives me the creeps. It all looks to be very much a tourist trap, but could actually be saving a lot of money in the long run. I'm sure maintenance on a robot is cheaper than having to pay a worker, provide insurance, a retirement plan, and a number of other inconveniences that flesh bags impose on their employers. You could even have a spare robot in a closet, in case one breaks down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @04:51AM
No HAL9000 has ever made an operational error.
PS - most of the time the quote of the moment / fortune at the bottom of the page here on Soylent is fine, great, funny, thoughtful. But a few of them are really bad: "you will be abducted by a radical group" (not funny with the ISIS crisis), or some other overly snarky remark. Not that 'PC' is required or even wanted, just good taste.