Everyone knows that the whole point of ordering hotel room service is being able to avoid interacting with other people and stay in your bath robe (while you eat several portions of chips).
Now hotel chains in America are acknowledging that none of us really want to talk to human member of staff and would rather our midnight snack be delivered by a tiny (adorable) robot butler, wearing a bowtie nonetheless.
The droids have been rolled out in a couple of hotels in the USA, including the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California (next door to Apple’s HQ) and now the YO2D2 at the Yotel chain in Boston. The chain also says their hotel in New York has a different Savioke Relay robot, to check in guests bags.
This week hotel guest and video producer Lucy James came across a robot in her hotel in Queens, New York and wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or terrified.
The robot is designed to greet arriving guests, deliver items to rooms (as tested by James), mingle in the lounge and at the rooftop bar, and sometimes even dance with guests (if you’re into that kind of thing).
Since the 100-pound robots have WIFI and 4G built in they, can call lifts for themselves when they need to move around the hotel.
And with a giant empty compartment on top, they can discreetly bring you toiletries and food without anyone seeing what you’ve asked for.
The robot was custom built by Savioke, an American tech company. And is employed at other locations around the world, including Singapore, where two Savioke Relay robots have been named Yoshi and Yolanda.
Yotel also operates airport locations at London Gatwick and Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris, Charles de Gaulle airports.
They are also developing new properties at Singapore Changi Airport as well as new city hotels in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Edinburgh, Miami, and Amsterdam.
James might have been impressed by the robot but other social media users were convinced that the robot signifies something a little darker.