Italy robot concierge novelty on way to better AI

Peschiera Del Garda, Italy: Robby Pepper can answer questions in Italian, English and German. Billed as Italy’s first robot concierge, the humanoid will be deployed all season at a hotel on lake Garda to help relieve staff of simple, repetitive questions.

During one of Robby Pepper’s first shifts, Mihail Slanina, a guest from Moldova, congratulated the robot on his skills. “He’s like a real person, he’s really good,” she enthused. “He talks, he shook my hand.”

Developed by Japan’s Softbank Robotics, Robby has been taught a list of questions such as the locations of spa, restaurants and opening hours, programmed by Italian company Jampaa. The summer tourist season will give Robby a crash course in unanticipated questions, apart from accents, which will help improve his knowledge, vocabulary and ability to answer.

The use of such robots is growing in services sectors like tourism, where the scale of business can overwhelm staff with menial tasks. Most of the automatons serve mainly as novelties — humanoid versions of an Alexa or Siri meant to marvel customers. They represent an expansion in automation, but one that’s likely to be scaled up only when better AI is developed. 

The International Federation of Robotics, in Frankfurt, Germany, forecasts sales of such robots will grow between 20 percent and 25 per cent a year through 2020, from about 79,000 last year.