There’s a hotel near Nagasaki, Japan, which is staffed by robots.
You can choose to be checked in to your room at the Henn na Hotel either by a robot in the shape of a dinosaur or a blank-faced fembot, because… well, Japan.[embedded content]As The Register describes, once you make it up to the room and unlock the door through facial recognition (what happens if there’s a power cut?) all your other requirements are handled by a bedside robot.
If it sounds bonkers that’s because it is bonkers and – you may not be surprised to hear – not entirely popular with guests.
In fact, in January this year it was reported that the hotel was halving its robotic workforce in half as many of them were better at creating work for human than reducing it:
“The Henn na Hotel in Japan, translated as Strange Hotel, found that robots annoyed the guests and would often break down. Guests complained their robot room assistants thought snoring sounds were commands and would wake them up repeatedly during the night. Meanwhile, the robot at the front desk could not answer basic questions. Human staff ended up working overtime to repair robots that stopped working.”
Who would have imagined that dinosaurs wouldn’t make the perfect hotel receptionist?
Anyway, it turns out that the hotel’s problems haven’t ended there.
Security researcher Lance R Vick has japanese hotel robots hacked guests their bedrooms
