robotics
Robot AI Startup Physical Intelligence Raises $400 Million From Bezos, OpenAI
November 4, 2024
(Reuters) - Physical Intelligence, a startup that is developing foundational software for robots, said on Monday it has raised $400 million in early-stage funding from Amazon's Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, venture capital firms Thrive Capital and Lux Capital. The new funds were raised at a $2 billion valuation, PitchBook data showed. Physical Intelligence is seeking to make a software that would work on any robot, eliminating the need to develop a software for each specific task. The largest tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia — are investing billions in adopting AI. Funding of AI and cloud companies in the U.S., ...
Robotics, Hotels and Storytelling
PolyU School of Hotel and Tourism Management | July 29, 2024
With rapid technological progress and a renewed emphasis on health and safety in the wake of COVID-19, more and more Chinese hotels are relying on robotics to facilitate customer service provision. Yet we still know little about how such service robots influence customers’ brand experience – a critical determinant of hotels’ growth and profitability in today’s highly competitive market. Rising to this challenge, Dr Vincent Tung of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a co-researcher bridge the gap between tourism and humanities research to explore customers’ narratives of hote...
Labor as We Know It Is Changing: How Hoteliers Can Fill the Gap
Elad Inbar | May 6, 2024
By Elad Inbar Hotels with Wi-Fi and televisions were, at one point, unimaginable for hoteliers, but as technology evolved, it became necessary for the hospitality industry to follow. Today, we are in the middle of an AI revolution — one that meets resistance from skeptics — but history has shown that early adopters of technology have kept hotels running by adapting to changing consumer needs. Clearly, new technology pays off. Recent research is showing that the robotics market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 12.29 percent in the next seven years, exceeding $225 billion in 2030. With operations being impacted by short staffing and ch...
UH Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership Launches Houston’s First Restaurant-Based Food Service Robot
The University of Houston | December 5, 2022
HOUSTON -Dec. 5, 2022 - As dean of the University of Houston Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership, Dennis Reynolds is constantly looking for the newest technologies and innovations to keep his program front and center on the world hospitality stage. His latest find is a state-of-the-art food service robot called “Servi,” now on duty in Eric’s Restaurant at the Hilton University of Houston. “There’s a lot of buzz out there,” Reynolds says. “People are excited about it.” Hilton College is the only hospitality program in the world where students work and take classes in an internationally branded, ful...
6 Main Ethical Concerns of Service Robots and Human Interaction
Dr Reza Etemad-Sajadi | February 17, 2022
By Dr. Reza Etemad-Sajadi “Service Robots” come with a variety of ethical questions regarding their use. Research in this field can help to find the win-win balance where companies reduce their costs, adapt employee activities and give customers added value with the right use of robot technology. A newcomer in the service sector Around the world, a lot of people have lost their jobs during the pandemic. In parallel, automation, AI, and the usage of robots are becoming more and more frequent. Indeed, the health situation has increased firms’ digitalization and automatization processes. In the past, when automa...
Robotics Operation in Travel and Tourism Industry Set to Grow
GlobalData | November 4, 2021
The utilization of robotics will continue to grow in importance in the travel and tourism industry. However, companies need to be sensitive in how they deploy this form of smart technology, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. According to a recent GlobalData poll*, 31% of the respondents stated that their company will invest in robotics in the next 12 months, with robotics being the third most popular answer for this question, above the likes of IoT and cloud. A significant contributing reason as to why business executives and employees think that investment in robotics will increase is due to the long-term cost savings ...
Is Hospitality Ready for the Army of Robots Coming to a Hotel Near You?
Max Starkov | December 11, 2020
By Max Starkov - Adjunct Professor NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality and Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant By 2025, over 85 million existing jobs will be lost due to the seismic shift toward robotization and automation, according to estimates in the "Future of Jobs Report 2020" published by the World Economic Forum. Dangerous, mundane and repetitive jobs performed by manual laborers, unskilled and low skilled workers, assembly and factory workers will be affected the hardest. This same report estimates that some 97 million new roles - the "jobs of tomorrow" - will emerge over the next decade, jobs that are more in tune wi...
Hospitality Professionals Balance Robots and Human Touch for Post-COVID-19 Era
December 11, 2020
December 11, 2020 - “We’re at the cutting edge of technology that, as kids, we laughed about and that is now becoming our reality,” said David Sherwyn, John and Melissa Ceriale Professor of Hospitality Human Resources and a professor of law, when he led a panel of experts in a discussion about automation and customer service in October. The webinar, Robots in the Hospitality Industry: Adopting new technologies while maintaining the human touch, was hosted by eCornell and the Cornell Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor and Employment Relations (CIHLER) in the School of Hotel Administration. Sherwyn is the academic director of C...
