Tug, the Busy Little Robot Nurse, Will See You Now
ROBOTS SEEM SO far away. We’re so many years from Jetsons-esque machines that live among us and wash our dishes and fold our clothes.
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Hotels
A unicorn apart: Among private tech firms, Airbnb has pursued a distinct strategy | The Economist
UNTIL recently “Uber envy” afflicted many top executives at Airbnb, a platform for booking overnight stays in other people’s homes. So admits a big investor in the firm. The two companies often raised money at the same time, and the ride-hailing giant reliably received more cash and closer attention.
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Japanese theme park’s floating hotel room lets you spend a night bobbing through the sea | Evening Standard
If Robinson Crusoe holidays are your type of thing, you’ll want to know about a new hotel concept that’s about to take Japan by storm.
Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park on the edge of Nagasaki, is planning to launch a fleet of pod-like, capsule hotel rooms that float in the water, so guests can wake up at a new destination each morning.
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Robot Customer Service Will Dominate Travel in the Future | Motherboard
“I am Chihira Kanae, a Toshiba communication android,” said a humanoid robot standing onstage as part of a presentation on the future of travel at the ITB Travel Fair earlier this year in Berlin.
Wearing a blue uniform and a white collared shirt framing her silicone neck and face, Kanae robot blinked as she spoke to an audience of flashing cameras.
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Japan’s ridiculous robot hotel is actually serious business
The University of Tokyo’s associate professor of architecture gestures behind himself to a flat, two-story building that doesn’t really look like a hotel. “Two-hundred people were involved in making this happen,” he says. “Experts in environmental design, engineering, architecture, robotics and construction.”
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Robots in hotels – JLL
From hotel lobbies to restaurant floors, robots have started servicing customers’ basic requests. According to the European Commission, the market for service robots will reach €100 billion a year by 2020.
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