Speaker 1: Robots taking over luggage duties at a brand new hotel.
Speaker 1: I'm rich Demiro and this is rich On Tech. Recently
Speaker 1: I visited a brand new Chareton hotel that has a
Speaker 1: unique service, a fleet of robots delivering room service and
Speaker 1: taking luggage up to guest rooms.
Speaker 2: So the robots are from a.
Speaker 1: Company named Atheon. They're the tug robot and previously they
Speaker 1: made a name for themselves in hospitals because these robots
Speaker 1: are a little bit bigger and they can carry supplies
Speaker 1: to hospital rooms, things like medicines, towels, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: And now this is a first for hotels. So the
Speaker 1: Sheraton Los Angeles San Gabriel Hotel has seven of these
Speaker 1: robots on staff, plus one more robot called a Wayfinder robot.
Speaker 1: So this is a robot that stands in the lobby,
Speaker 1: it greets guests. It has a little screen on it
Speaker 1: and it can walk you to wherever you need to go.
Speaker 1: So if you want to find the restaurant, you just
Speaker 1: pop that on the screen and it will walk.
Speaker 2: You to the restaurant.
Speaker 1: Then these other robots, which are much bigger, they will
Speaker 1: do all kinds of heavy lifting, so they can take
Speaker 1: linens around the back of the hotel. They can deliver
Speaker 1: meals and room service, and also their main duty is
Speaker 1: bringing luggage to the guest rooms.
Speaker 2: So we watched it in action. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: A real person loads up the luggage onto the robot
Speaker 1: and then they lock the door, and then the front
Speaker 1: desk programs in which guest room it's going to. The
Speaker 1: robot then on its own, uses a combination of sort
Speaker 1: of indoor GPS and Wi Fi to walk its way
Speaker 1: to the service elevator, avoiding people in the process. If
Speaker 1: you stand in front of it, the thing's going to
Speaker 1: stop and try to go around you. Then it takes
Speaker 1: the service elevator up to the room, and once it
Speaker 1: gets outside your room, it will ring the phone inside
Speaker 1: your guest room and it will say, hey, I'm outside
Speaker 1: the front door.
Speaker 2: Here's the code.
Speaker 1: It'll give you a four digit code to go outside
Speaker 1: your room and unlock the luggage robot. You pull your
Speaker 1: luggage out, you bring it into your room, and you're done.
Speaker 2: Now you don't have to use this.
Speaker 1: They still have regular bell people if you want your
Speaker 1: luggage brought up to your room that way, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you need extra help because you do have to
Speaker 1: take the luggage out of the robot yourself.
Speaker 2: Now, if there's someone that walked.
Speaker 1: You up to your room, like a bell person, maybe
Speaker 1: they can stay and help you take the luggage out
Speaker 1: as well. So I thought it was really cool. It
Speaker 1: was neat to see these robots in action. They do
Speaker 1: move pretty fast, so they know their way around the hotel.
Speaker 1: The entire thing has been mapped by the company so
Speaker 1: that the robots know their way around. They also have
Speaker 1: all of the doors equipped with sensors, so the robots
Speaker 1: can open the doors all by themselves. You watch them
Speaker 1: open the elevators, you watch them open all the common doors.
Speaker 1: They don't open the guest room doors, but perhaps that
Speaker 1: will happen in a future version of these things.
Speaker 2: I'd see that as a possibility for sure.
Speaker 1: Now the biggest question is do you tip these robots
Speaker 1: because someone is loading the luggage into the robot or
Speaker 1: the food that you get delivered to your room.
Speaker 2: So I talked to the hotel.
Speaker 1: They said, yeah, you can leave a tip inside the
Speaker 1: robot's belly, whatever you want to call it, and some
Speaker 1: human will reach reave that tip and of course split
Speaker 1: it at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: I thought this was really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's definitely one of those things where it is a
Speaker 1: sign of the times.
Speaker 2: Our world continues to put more and more robots to work.
Speaker 1: And the ironic part about robots is that they're doing
Speaker 1: a lot of these duties that humans can do super easily,
Speaker 1: but it takes a whole team of people to program
Speaker 1: these robots to do even the simplest tasks that any
Speaker 1: human could be trained to do in just a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. If you want to see the video on
Speaker 1: the robots, be sure to click the link in the description.
Speaker 1: I've got a full demonstration of how these things work.
Speaker 1: They even have a little bow ties on, like kind
Speaker 1: of like a little tuxedo painted on the front of them.
Speaker 1: And they're looking to name these things as well.
Speaker 2: So check out the video. It's in the description there.
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Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: For more information on anything I mentioned here in the
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech podcast.
Speaker 2: Just go to rich on tech dot TV. I'm Rich
Speaker 2: Tomorrow and I'll talk to you next time. Bye bye,