Many travellers have stories about trying to deal with people in the leisure industry who act like robots, well now they can talk to real robots as Costa Cruises recruits robots to serve on two of their ships.
The World’s first humanoid robot called Pepper will join Costa Cruises staff from spring 2016, working on board the Costa Diadema and sister ship AIDAprima.
Costa Cruises have signed an exclusive agreement worth more than one million euros with the French company Aldebaran, a subsidiary of the SoftBank Group, for the world’s first deployment of ‘Pepper’ robots on board cruise ships.
Pepper robots are capable of reading human emotions and are built to interact with people by communicating through intuitive interfaces including voice and touch. Speaking fluent German, Italian and English, the friendly and engaging robots will add a whole new digital dimension to the cruise experience and bolster Costa’s customer service offering.
The robots will even be able to provide recommendations on restaurants, events and excursions.
Pepper takes the environment and surroundings into account and his numerous joints and wheels enable him to move fluidly. His 3D camera allows him to detect people and their movements and he is able to analyse expressions and voice tones using the latest advances in voice and emotion recognition.
