HOTREC | Factsheet N°1 on Innovation

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> Using robots to support staff: the future of the industry?
The use of robots in hospitality services is another
potential future trend. A hotel in Japan, Henn-
na, uses robots for various positions such as the
receptionists, the porter who brings the luggage
and delivering room services. These developments,
which have been experimented in the United States
as well, will have major social, economic and
business effects, being also apparently, very
popular with the kids.
In order not to let the European
hotel sector lag behind other
parts of the world in what
may soon become a new
highly regarded trend,
HOTREC played a role of
match-maker between
the Asociacion Instituto
Tecnológico Hotelero
(ITH) and other key-
actors in technology (e.g.
the aerospace and defense
group Thales, the retail
company Leroy Merlin, the
Norwegian independent non-
profit institute for applied R&D
Teknova) which led to the creation
of a consortium which applied to a
European-funded project envisaging to experiment
robots in the hotel sector.
If successful, the proposal, calledRobots4all, will create
a multi-purpose repository of robotic applications
that users can adopt and adapt to their needs. The
partners are committed to ensure that robots do not
displace humans but, instead, support employees
and citizens to better achieve their daily needs. To
that end, the project supports seamless integration
of several open ICT developments on a robot tailored
by users to their needs, enabling them to self-design
new robotic applications in a modular way by making
use of robots, sensors and mobile platforms through
a Robotic Application Modules (RAM) store. The
project will notably propose RAM for three technical
areas -- computer vision, deep learning and mobile
computing -- to respond to generic needs for machine
vision, artificial intelligence and real-time operations.
Apps will be created in these areas as examples of
modules that end users could find in the repository.
ROBOTS4ALL expects many more, third-party apps in
the repository over time. Robotic applications
will be evaluated in three use cases in
retail, hotel and oil & gas sectors.
The hotel industry is a very
heterogeneous sector providing
customisable solutions that
are easily adapted to particular
needs and services of each
hotel and clientele typology.
Therefore, the creation of a
generic open framework with
modular components and
apps to easy develop robotic
and digital solutions will allow
automation of processes and
operations, which can improve
services within the hotel industry.
Various applications are envisaged in
the hotel sector – from welcoming guests, to
transporting luggage to rooms, to generating receipts
for payments received, to room services and cleaning.
To take the latter example application, nowadays, it is
common to find several vacuuming robots with a high
grade of autonomy performing well in households.
Cleaning services have a huge impact on hotel
operations, not only in economic terms but also on day-
to-day management. If we can enable the automation
of vacuuming, it will benefit hotels by reducing time
spent, liberating human resources to focus in more
valuable tasks, guaranteeing much better service, and,
therefore, offering a better guest experience.
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