Savioke's Robot Butler Brings You Room Service
In a six-month trial run, this robot made over 1,000 deliveries in busy hotel
In August of last year, Savioke came out of stealth mode and introduced SaviOne, a hotel delivery robot. SaviOne is able to autonomously navigate through lobbies, up elevators, down hallways, and around obstacles to deliver small items like snacks to any room in a hotel. We checked in on SaviOne over the course of several months of its real-world testing at a hotel in Cupertino, Calif., and CEO Steve Cousins talked to us about how the robot is learning how to deal with some of the unique challenges of operating in a partially unstructured environment. In March, Savioke announced the successful conclusion of its pilot program with SaviOne, along with a new delivery robot called Relay.
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.