Robots Will Staff New Hotel in Japan

If you prefer your vacations with a minimum of human interaction, you might try a hotel that's opening in Japan this summer. The Henn-na Hotel's human staff will number just 10, but that doesn't mean you won't get speedy service: Robots will be ready to help you with everything from reception to cleaning to carrying your bags, the Telegraph reports. Developed at Osaka University, the eerily human-like robots are known as actroids. Most look like young Japanese women. They can speak several languages and move their eyes to correspond with yours—a feature that could be pretty disturbing, LiveScience notes, and indeed, the hotel's name means "strange hotel."

The hotel will be located in the Huis Ten Bosch theme park near Nagasaki. Rooms will start at $60 a night; robots don't generally ask to be paid, and that will help reduce the hotel's costs, SlashGear reports. The goal, says a Huis Ten Bosch rep, is a "smart hotel," complete with facial-recognition door locks. "We will make the most efficient hotel in the world,” company president Hideo Sawada says, per the Japan Times. “In the future, we’d like to have more than 90% of hotel services operated by robots.” (Maybe you'll even be able to get a ride there from a robot.)