Inside the Japanese Hotel Staffed by Robots
If there’s one place on Earth you can already get a glimpse of our robot-assisted future, it’s Japan. Routinely at the forefront of robotics research, the country has brought us some of the weirdest automatons, most lifelike androids, and cutest helper-bots.
Nowhere is this more evident than at Nagasaki’s Henn-na Hotel, a hotel run by robots that opened this year. Walk into reception and a mechanised dinosaur will guide you through check-in; go to your room and a luggage bot will wheel your suitcase along beside you; get ready for bed and your own robot companion will turn out the lights.
Henn-na Hotel CEO Hideo Sawada sells his offering as part of a utopian vision where robots take over manual labour so humans can turn their attention to more creative pursuits. Replacing staff with robots might reduce labour costs, but their appeal to visitors needs to last beyond novelty value.
Motherboard host Ben Ferguson checks into the robot hotel in the first episode of our new travel series Voyager, made possible by travel tool KAYAK (http://www.kayak.co.uk/). The robot workers he meets are courteous and communicative, but can they emulate the human warmth of their flesh-and-blood counterparts? Could robots really be our future holiday companions, or do man and machine ultimately get lost in translation?
WATCH NEXT: The US Military's Robot World Championship - http://bit.ly/1PGsLNt
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If there’s one place on Earth you can already get a glimpse of our robot-assisted future, it’s Japan. Routinely at the forefront of robotics research, the country has brought us some of the weirdest automatons, most lifelike androids, and cutest helper-bots.
Nowhere is this more evident than at Nagasaki’s Henn-na Hotel, a hotel run by robots that opened this year. Walk into reception and a mechanised dinosaur will guide you through check-in; go to your room and a luggage bot will wheel your suitcase along beside you; get ready for bed and your own robot companion will turn out the lights.
Henn-na Hotel CEO Hideo Sawada sells his offering as part of a utopian vision where robots take over manual labour so humans can turn their attention to more creative pursuits. Replacing staff with robots might reduce labour costs, but their appeal to visitors needs to last beyond novelty value.
Motherboard host Ben Ferguson checks into the robot hotel in the first episode of our new travel series Voyager, made possible by travel tool KAYAK (http://www.kayak.co.uk/). The robot workers he meets are courteous and communicative, but can they emulate the human warmth of their flesh-and-blood counterparts? Could robots really be our future holiday companions, or do man and machine ultimately get lost in translation?
WATCH NEXT: The US Military’s Robot World Championship – http://bit.ly/1PGsLNt
Subscribe to MOTHERBOARD: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-To-MOTHERBOARD
Follow MOTHERBOARD
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/motherboardtv
Twitter: http://twitter.com/motherboard
Tumblr: http://motherboardtv.tumblr.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/motherboardtv
More videos from the VICE network: https://www.fb.com/vicevideos
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It would be nice to have those little robot things in your room. They're quite cute.
I wouldn't stay a night in that hotel even if they paid me
we also build a humanoid robot called #bob … if you like robots check it out on @contactnavarra #contactnavarra
When he said that this guy was like the Donald Trump of the hotel I don’t think so this guy looks like he can hold his business together and not take it under
0:55 oh yeah ♥♥♥
I couldn't sleep in a box were not dead yet we're going into a box when were dead .creepy not comfy at all
I think it's creepy not my kind of place at all sad this is taking jobs away from the human race two thumbs down .
Did we really have to replace humans with robots? Really?!?!?! REALLY????!!??!? No offense,
But seriously you had to do it? It makes me a little sad to know that there are no humans working in the hotel, it was not necessary that the whole damn hotel was full of robots, no offense X2,
I know it is an "innovation" but it was not necessary,
It is also a bit sad to know that all workers are only robots and not humans.
I do not understand why a Hotel would have to be received Only by robots, it was not necessary.
this should be a shroom challenge. see how long you last balls deep into 5g of shrooms.