In part one of our workplace automation series, we covered advances from the factory floor to the drone equipped delivery van- and the logistics in between.

Today’s post covers the customer facing side of robotics- devices seen as you go about your day to day business. Automation that makes you stop and think… “A robot does that now?” – and -quite unlike our long post on the early Hyperloop technologies– this article is strictly for the “TLDR “crowd. The post simply features a set of interesting pictures, without putting too many words in the way of the cool new tech in motion.

Robots in Motion- Travel

Hotel

Savioke Relay robots renders hotel services-  It can operate elevators,  deliver drinks, snacks and light sundries to guestrooms.

Hotel Uses  Relay Robot to deliver items to guests

At the highly Automated Henn Na hotel in Sasebo Japan, Robots are used to greet incoming guests, as well as assist in carrying luggage:

Reception Desk- Lifelike robot greeter

Hotel Robot Carries Baggage

Automated Movers

Bag Bot

Digi  Robotics’ “Bag Bot” is one of the first Automatic Baggage Loading System for Airports. So far it’s in limited use in Heathrow, Amsterdam and Frankfort Airports.

Digibot’s Bag Bot handling luggage- Amsterdam

Taxibot

Taxibot- on the  tarmac

Israel Aerospace Industries has developed the TaxiBot – a semi-autonomous quasi-robotic vehicle which allows an airplane to taxi without its engines running. It’s partially controlled by the pilot, who uses an interface  which  provides pilot steering , utilizing  the airplane’s existing controls in the cockpit. Taxiing speed is also controlled by the pilot using the aircraft’s brakes. The TaxiBot system can save  fuel and prevent foreign object damage to the plane. Additionally, given that the plane is not using its jst engines for ground travel,  TaxiBot can reduce noise and air pollution.

Parking Robot

From Serva, comes Ray – an innovative automated parking solution. At the Dusseldorf airport- a Ray robot will move your car to the most logical parking spot, providing an additional 40-60% space for more cars.  At the  Audi plant in Ingolstadt, Germany the same type of Ray robots move new cars to various finishing and storage areas.

Ray- The parking robot from Serva

And of course, one of the most amazing examples of robots handling cars is the automated car shuttle in the Autostadt, Volkswagen’s automated showroom and demonstration center: 

VW’s Autostadt- Elegant Automated Car Storage

In the next post, we’ll tackle the robots that are soon to be essential in our daily lives- Automation in the health care and food industries.