Technology

Robots Do Check-in and Check-out at Cost-Cutting Japan Hotel

Published

9 years ago

July 16, 2015

A cloak robot, left, waits as a hotel employee leaves her suitcase at the cloak window during a demonstration for the media at the new robot hotel, aptly called Henn na Hotel or Weird Hotel, in Sasebo, southwestern Japan, Wednesday, July 15, 2015. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Yuri Kageyama, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SASEBO, Japan (AP) — The English-speaking receptionist is a vicious-looking dinosaur, and the one speaking Japanese is a female humanoid with blinking lashes. “If you want to check in, push one,” the dinosaur says. The visitor still has to punch a button on the desk, and type in information on a touch panel screen.

From the front desk to the porter that’s an automated trolley taking luggage up to the room, this hotel in southwestern Japan, aptly called Weird Hotel, is “manned” almost totally by robots to save labor costs.

Hideo Sawada, who runs the hotel as part of an amusement park, insists using robots is not a gimmick, but a serious effort to utilize technology and achieve efficiency.

Henn na Hotel, as it is called in Japanese, was shown to reporters Wednesday, complete with robot demonstrations, ahead of its opening to the public Friday.

Another feature of the hotel is the use of facial recognition technology, instead of the standard electronic keys, by registering the digital image of the guest’s face during check-in.

The reason? Robots aren’t good at finding keys, if people happen to lose them.

A giant robotic arm, usually seen in manufacturing, is encased in glass quarters in the corner of the lobby. It lifts one of the boxes stacked into the wall and puts it out through a space in the glass, where a guest can place an item in it, to use as a locker.

The arm will put the box back into the wall, until the guest wants it again. The system is called “robot cloak room.”

Why a simple coin locker won’t do isn’t the point.

“I wanted to highlight innovation,” Sawada told reporters. “I also wanted to do something about hotel prices going up.”

Staying at Henn na Hotel starts at 9,000 yen ($80), a bargain for Japan, where a stay in one of the nicer hotels can easily cost twice or three times that much.

The concierge is a doll-like hairless robot with voice recognition that prattles breakfast and event information. It cannot call a cab or do other errands.

Japan is a world leader in robotics technology, and the government is trumpeting robotics as a pillar of its growth strategy. Robots have long been used here in manufacturing. But interest is also high in exploring the potential of robots in human interaction, including helping care for the elderly.

Robotics is also key in the decommissioning of the three reactors in Fukushima, northern Japan, which went into meltdowns in 2011, in the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.

One area Henn na Hotel still relies on human beings is security.

The place is dotted with security cameras, and real people are watching everything through a monitor to make sure guests stay safe and no one makes off with one of the expensive robots.

“And they still can’t make beds,” said Sawada, who has also engineered the rise of a popular affordable Japanese travel agency.

He has big ambitions for his robot hotel concept and wants to open another one soon in Japan, and later abroad. He is also eager to add other languages, such as Chinese and Korean, to the robots’ vocabulary.

A block-shaped robot that was scuttling around in the lobby had been brought in to do room service, delivering beverages and simple snacks. But it wasn’t ready to do that yet.

Outdoors, Sawada also demonstrated a drone that flew in to deliver a few small jars filled with snacks. He said he wanted to eventually have drones perform in shows for guests.

In the hotel’s rooms, a lamp-size robot in the shape of a fat pink tulip called Tuly answers simple questions like, “What time is it?” and “What is the weather tomorrow?”

You can also tell it to turn the room lights on or off. There are no switches on the walls.

Sawada is keeping the hotel half-filled for the first few weeks to make sure nothing goes wrong.

He also canceled at the last minute the overnight stay planned for media. The robots simply weren’t ready.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama: twitter.com/yurikageyama.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Attorney General Rob Bonta, Oakland Lawmakers, Introduce Legislation to Protect Youth Online

At a press conference in downtown Oakland on Jan. 29, Attorney General Rob Bonta joined Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) to announce two pieces of legislation designed to protect children online. The bills are Senate Bill (SB) 976, the Protecting Youth from Social Media Addiction Act and Assembly Bill (AB) 1949, the California Children’s Data Privacy Act.

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From left to right: Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), Attorney General Rob Bonta and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) at a press conference introducing legislation to protect young people online.

By Magaly Muñoz

The bills are Senate Bill (SB) 976, the Protecting Youth from Social Media Addiction Act and Assembly Bill (AB) 1949, the California Children’s Data Privacy Act.

Skinner authored SB 976, which addresses online addiction affecting teenage users, while Wicks’s bill, AB 1949, takes on big tech by proposing data privacy and children rights protections.

“Social media companies unfortunately show us time and time again that they are all too willing to ignore the detriment to our children, the pain to our children, the mental health and physical challenges they face, in order to pursue profits,” Bonta said.

SB 976 would allow parents to control the nature and frequency of the content their under-18-year-old children see on social media. Notifications from social media platforms would also be paused from midnight to 6 am and controls would allow parents to set time limits on their children’s usage based on their discretion.

Skinner stated that the longer that kids are on their phones during the day, the higher the risk for depression, anxiety and other related issues.

The bill would also push to get rid of addictive media that is harmful for young women and girls, specifically image filters that mimic cosmetic plastic surgery.

Bonta and 33 other attorney generals had previously filed a lawsuit against Meta, owner of the popular social media applications Instagram and Facebook. The filing claims that the company purposefully uses algorithmized content that harms younger audiences.

“Social media companies have the ability to protect our kids, they could act, but they do not,” Skinner said.

The Child Data Privacy Act would strengthen existing protections for data privacy under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The lawmakers argue that the law does not have effective protection for those under 18 years old.

Wicks stated that the bill would forbid businesses from collecting, using, sharing, or selling personal data of anyone underage unless they receive informed consent, or it becomes necessary for the purpose of the business.

Wicks added that the acts would make it so that a search on the internet like “How do I lose weight?” would not result in dieting pill advertisements targeting youth, which, some experts report, could be harmful to their mental and physical health.

“In a digital age where the vulnerabilities of young users are continually exploited, we cannot afford to let our laws lag behind, our children deserve complete assurance that their online experience will be safeguarded from invasive practices,” Wicks said.

Supporters of the two acts say they have gained bipartisan support issue, but the authors and Bonta expect them to be met with pushback from the affected companies.

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