Guided Tours & Reception

Robots greeting, explaining, and leading the way at exhibition halls, malls, and lobbies.

Guided tours and reception refers to robots providing greeting, explanation, Q&A, and wayfinding at exhibition halls, museums, government service centers, shopping malls, and bank branches. It demands little manipulation ability, relying mainly on voice interaction, navigation, and visual presence, which makes it one of the earliest commercialized scenarios for service and humanoid robots. An early representative was SoftBank's Pepper, and in recent years a number of Chinese humanoid robots have also been delivered for showroom explanation and event greeting. Orders in this scenario come relatively quickly, but the real labor value a single unit creates is limited, so the industry generally discusses it separately from “real work” scenarios like factory material handling and sorting when talking about a viable business model.

ExampleSoftBank's Pepper, launched in 2015, was deployed in large numbers at stores and banks for greeting and inquiries.

Related

Service Robot · Real-world Deployment · Commercial Robot Performances · SoftBank Robotics Pepper · Human-Robot Interaction

Sources

Pepper (robot) - Wikipedia