In recent years, massive leaps have been made in the development of humanoid robots. The idea of making mechanical humans that can do our chores for us is as old as Talos, the fictional bronze man that was thought up by the ancient Greeks in 300 B.C. However, recent developments in robot building might make human-shaped robots a real possibility in people’s houses in the near future, and possibly also in our professional work environments.
Humanoids for hospitality
Having robots perform tasks makes a lot of logical sense for hotels and restaurants, as hotels continue to struggle with personnel shortages and employee turnover. These shortages are most pronounced in physically demanding job types such as housekeeping or kitchen work. If instead of hiring a human employee, a manager could put in a robot that can perform the same tasks, but is never ill, can work double shifts seven days a week (if it is properly charged) and will never seek out a different career path, these employment issues would be over quickly. The costs of complex walking robots are still high at this point, but are said to go down as more competitors enter the market over time.
The development of humanoids
If humanoids were a no-brainer for hospitality executives to deploy, why are they not being used today? This is because the developers of these robots are still busy teaching them as many tasks as possible. In recent videos, we can see Tesla’s Optimus robots learning simple tasks like picking up items and pushing buttons in a factory. This teaching is done by having humans execute a task, and the robots imitate the humans. If we extrapolate this process, humanoid robots will be able to do the same work as humans in due time. The humanoid robot company NEO is also thinking along these lines. Their vision for domestic humanoids is that consumers can order a robot to do chores around the house from early 2026 onwards. Any task the robot cannot do will then first be done remotely by a NEO employee operating the robot from a distance. From the data collected during this process, the robot can then learn to do the task autonomously. Easier tasks, like opening a door, are quickly learned, and harder tasks will take longer.
How easy is hospitality work for humanoids?
In physical hospitality work, many tasks might be hard for humanoid robots to perform. Chopping vegetables, for example, involves grasping oddly shaped objects that can be deformable or have bad spots that should be identified to not ending up in guests’ food. Similarly, making a hotel bed consists of picking up many deformable objects like blankets, mattresses and pillows that are also heavy and large (a king-size duvet can be up to 2.5 meters in width, which is more than any humanoid’s span). Also important to consider is the speed at which humanoid robots would be required to work in commercial hotels. It is one thing to have a robot being able to clean a bathroom, but quite another to have it do it as fast as a human housekeeper.
Who is getting replaced?
There is another important factor to consider, and that is the competitiveness of humanoids compared to human labour. Humanoids are still in their developmental stages, which makes them expensive. Their costs will go down as they become more mainstream, and more companies will start implementing them. For a manager who is considering replacing human workers with humanoids that can do any task, the costs for the robot are compared to the costs of the human and the most profitable option is chosen. In this way of thinking, the jobs that will get automated first are the ones with the highest wages, because they will result in the most direct gains.
