Visualize this scenario: you come to your fully loaded hotel room in a swanky facility, and promptly receive a greeting from a robot that then offloads your baggage, and takes it to your room, in the process, conversing with you on the interesting things to do in the city and locations for good eats in close proximity. Many of these emergent technologies sound positively out of science fiction, but as we at AICoreSpot often like to say in this regard, reality can be stranger (and often times more fascinating) than fiction. 

This is already present in locations such as South Korea, a technologically progressive nation state that has given us industry stalwarts such as Samsung, who relentlessly put out one innovative technology after another. A latest announcement was made by the Novotel Ambassador Seoul Dongdaemun Hotels and Residences that they’re set to leverage robotic assistance in delivering room service facilities, leveraging 3D mapping, 5G, and of course, AI. 

It’s becoming somewhat commonplace to see human being’s tasks outsourced to robots, such arrangements are in place in airports, production lines, railway stations, and even cleaning homes. This blog post by AICoreSpot takes a look at how robotics is revolutionizing the service industry. 

Robotic waiters 

The leveraging of machines as waiters in the restaurant field is increasing, with an increasing number of restaurant proprietors leveraging robotic machines in lieu of human employees owing to a dearth of wait staff. The current COVID-19 pandemic has served as a breeding ground for such innovation, where social distancing is a critical consideration, with customers being queasy when being handed napkins, plates, and cutlery from human employees – who are susceptible to the virus. Robots, not so much. Presently, there exist robot wait staff that have been produced leveraging an autonomous framework that functions by using wheels and a Robot Operating System (ROS) which helps in mapping the robot’s trajectory and utilizes specialist navigation software to inform the robot where to go for its next delivery providing food, drink, and maybe even amusing conversation to restaurant patrons.  

Robot waiters are more productive, effective, and unlikely to be prone to human error such as being distracted, and provide restaurant owners none of the troubles connected with human employees, Although these robotic wait staff are presently being leveraged only with regards to putting food at tables, we might sooner rather than later, witness a system wherein the customer provides their order on a tablet or some other smart device, and it subsequently gets to their tables eliminating the need for human contact. 

Robotic couriers 

One industry where robotic aides are gaining traction is in the domain of robotic couriers. Autonomous machines that can undertake delivery of packages correctly and in swift fashion has tremendous cost and time savings for e-commerce organizations, therefore reducing operational expenditure in other spheres, enabling these organizations to feature competitive pricing with regards to their product lineup. Presently, U.S.-based courier organizations like FedEx are evaluating robots that can carry out same-day delivering of payloads of up to 100 pounds, with 10 mph travel speeds and capacity to get up flights of stairs. 

Robotics in delivering applications are also being leveraged for fresh food packages and if these tests are fruitful, we could see an explosion in this sphere in the not too distant future. 

Robot grocery store checkout employees 

In the convenience store sector, robots are currently being prototyped that survey the shelves, detect items through barcodes and specialized scanning machines, and put them onto carts so they can be packaged by a human and provided to the online customer. At a higher level, robotics is being leveraged at the point of checking out, to hasten and streamline the cumulative process. 

A Japanese grocery outlet has already deployed a robotic checkout system that not just undertakes scanning of a customer’s groceries, but also goes about bagging them. More complicated robot checking out systems in the near future could contain real robotic arms that have the capacity to evaluate more intricate items and go about bagging them in the correct manner. 

Casino bots 

The field of casinos have begun prototyping robot croupiers, that, regardless of eliminating the human touch from the gambling experience, add to the experience by enticing persons interested to gamble in futuristic casinos. Robotic croupiers never get exhausted, the implication being that they can work around the clock without any scope for error or fatigue – something that’s just not possible with humans. They are also better poised to identify cheating, rendering the lives of casino managers that much simpler, in addition to being more affordable to maintain and buy when contrasted with employing a human agent. 

Croupiers are just one of the ways in which robots are being leveraged in casinos, robotic bartenders, for example, will fetch several drinks correctly in succession, and will provide the ideal drink each time without fail. Also, you can deploy robotic waiters who provides the drinks straight at your poker table, swiftly and with minimal effort.  

Robotic security and bouncers can monitor the floors of the casino, leveraging video cams and AI to track the behavior of gamblers, facilitating them to identify any suspect activity and weed it out at the root. 

Robots in service are the way of the future 

As we’ve just seen the extent to which robots will facilitate these industries, it is seemingly a no-brainer that tech is bound to move in that route. Although there is quite a debate that’s raging over whether robotic service personnel will create job loss by rendering human agents redundant, a certainty is this – this is the direction in which things are moving and it’s time to either shape up, or ship out!