The world’s first robot hotel has opened in Japan where artificial lifeforms take the roles of reception staff, bellboys and cleaners. Henn-na Hotel (translated as Strange Hotel) comes packed with features such as facial recognition that allows guests to enter their rooms, tablets so that guests can order things as they need them and a system that detects body heat in the rooms and adjusts the temperature accordingly.
Prices range from just over €50 to almost €140, but will vary according to demand with prospective guests bidding against each other for one of the 72 rooms during peak season. The robot receptionists may not be programmed to haggle over pricing, but the creators of the hotel say they will be able to engage in intelligent conversations.
Naturally there will be some human oversight in the project, but the creators of the hotel are hoping that robots will run almost the entire hotel eventually. Next year, the creators plan to add another 72 rooms to the hotel, and say they want to build 1,000 similar places around the world.