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Robot Resorts In 50 Years?
Tourism expert Dr. Ian Yeoman predicts that within 50 years we will be traveling to resorts manned by robots, staying self-cleaning rooms. Speaking at the Tourism Futures conference that is being held on Australia’s Gold Coast he says that with the rising cost of travel and basics like food and water, robots could be introduced to keep spending on staff down to a minimum.
Sound's like Dr. Yeoman has been reading up - in science fiction novels like Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, which features an automatic hotel:
"I'm looking for a room," I tried, in Japanese out of pure curiosity.
The screen jumped into life so damatically that I took a step backwards. From whirling, multicolored fragments it rapidly assembled a tanned Asian face above a dark collar and tie. The face smiled and changed into a Caucasian female, aged fractionally, and I was facing a blonde thirty-year-old woman in a sober business suit. Having generated my interpersonal ideal, the hotel also decided that I couldn't speak Japanese after all.
"Good day, sir. Welcome to the Hotel Hendrix, establishhed 2087 and still here today. How may we serve you... We have a number of rooms, all fully cabled to the city's information and entertainment stack. Please indicate your preference for floor and size."
As for self-cleaning rooms, some of Ray Bradbury's robot mice from his 1950 story There Will Come Soft Rains should do nicely.
Via Robots run hotels.
The lobby was deserted, but there was a faint glow coming from a counter on the far wall. I picked my way toward it, past low armchairs and shin-hungry metal-edged tables, and found a recessed monitor screen swarming with the random snow of disconnection. In one corner, a command pulsed on and off in English, Spanish and kanji characters.
SPEAK...
(Read more about the automatic hotel)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/18/2009)
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