Make way for the Robotic Butler and Waiter to take over Hospitality biz

MUMBAI: Restaurant-goers at take away counters or automated food courts, as well as posh fine dine outlets can very soon expect robotic butlers and waiters in the weeks to come.

With Amazon announcing they were acquiring iRobot, the acquisition of the maker of the popular Roomba robotic vacuums comes less than a year after Amazon unveiled its own home robot, Astro. Following Amazon were many smaller names, which while not as significant as the big daddy, will definitely make a mark on the way things work.

Amazon’s announcement was close on the heels of the unveiling of Optimus, Tesla’s robotic humanoid. CEO Elon Musk was quoted as saying that “he thinks the impact of the Optimus could someday exceed that of the company’s hugely popular electric vehicles today”.

One advantage both companies Amazon and Telsa have is they can develop and amortize their robotic investments across both their industrial and consumer-facing markets.

Industry has and always will lead in terms of automation adoption for various reasons, the most important being economics and that’s partly why both companies have invested so much over the past decade in building and perfecting their robotics platforms; it gives them a strategic advantage in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and other parts of their core business and next gen businesses opportunities that may come in.

With two of the world’s biggest tech companies – along with a lot of other big consumer product companies – finally getting serious about the home robotics market, we should all be prepared for the coming wave of home robot assistants – be their souped-up Roombas or robotic butlers – in the coming years.