“It rolls down the hallway from the lobby, communicates with the elevator wirelessly to know when it can board and then travels the final leg to the guest’s room. Botlr calls guests via their room phone to let them know it has arrived. The touchscreen guides the guest through retrieving their item and then asks for a rating out of five stars. If the feedback is good, it does a little dance.”
If you call down to the front desk at the Aloft hotel in Cupertino, Calif., to replace that toothbrush you forgot to bring, a human will not come to your aid. Beginning tonight, a robot named Botlr will take the elevator up to your room and deliver it instead.
Botlr is the first product out of Savioke, a robotics company that received $2 million in seed funding in April to bring helpful robots to the service sector. Just 10 weeks after announcing the funding, Savioke closed a deal with Starwood Hotels to begin testing a robotic bellhop at the Cupertino Aloft. Other hotel locations could follow.
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