A Japanese hotel that gained fame in 2015 for inducting a fleet of humanoid robots as service personnel, have reportedly decommissioned the machines in favor of humans after finding out that the technology isn’t quite ready for prime-time just yet.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Henn-na, or ‘Strange’ Hotel in Sasebo removed more than half of its 243 robots after they left guests annoyed and frustrated by failing to understand basic commands and service requests and being incapable of offering the same standards as Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant.
Not only that, they were reportedly creating more work for the hotel’s human staff than the they were doing themselves. Things got so bad that the hotel had to increase overtime for its human staff to manage the robotic fleet.
Image Courtesy: Alastair Gale/The Wall Street Journal