Purpose

Along with the development of the robotics industry, service robots have been gradually used in the hospitality industry. Nevertheless, service robot categorization and the fulfillment of the cognitive and emotional needs of consumers by hotel service robots have yet to be fully explored. Hence, the purpose of this study are to categorize hotel service robots, to explore consumers’ robot hotel experience, to identify the consumers’ preference of hotel service robot in general, to reveal consumers’ preference for hotel service robots based on their fulfillment of emotional needs and to examine the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks.

Design/methodology/approach

Through in-depth interviews with technology managers and questionnaire survey among consumers who have and have not had robot hotel stay experience to achieve the aforementioned research objectives.

Findings

Findings of in-depth interviews show that service robots can be categorized as check-in/out robots, artificial intelligence (AI) robots and service delivery robots. Results of questionnaire survey indicate that consumers prefer non-humanoid robots (n = 213, p = 47.87%) among check-in/out robots, the Xiaodu Smart Display (n = 163, p = 36. 63%) among the AI robots and the machine-shaped robot porter (I) (n = 178, p = 40.00%) among the service delivery robots.

Practical implications

This study provides implications, such as the adoption of robot-shaped AI with a screen display, to hotel managers to meet the needs of consumers regarding the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks of robots.

Originality/value

This study extends uncanny valley theory by identifying preference for the shape and functions of different categories of service robots and contributes to the limited literature on hotel robots.

中文翻译：

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通过人机交互实现服务机器人的认知分析和情感社交任务

 目的

随着机器人行业的发展，服务机器人已逐渐应用于酒店行业。然而，服务机器人的分类以及酒店服务机器人对消费者认知和情感需求的满足还有待充分探索。因此，本研究的目的是对酒店服务机器人进行分类，探索消费者的机器人酒店体验，确定消费者对酒店服务机器人的总体偏好，揭示消费者基于情感满足对酒店服务机器人的偏好。需求并检查认知分析和情感社会任务的完成情况。

设计/方法论/途径

通过对技术管理者的深度访谈以及对有过和没有过机器人酒店入住经历的消费者进行问卷调查来实现上述研究目标。

 发现

深度访谈发现，服务机器人可分为入住/退房机器人、人工智能机器人和服务交付机器人。问卷调查结果表明，入住/退房机器人中消费者更喜欢非人形机器人（ n = 213， p = 47.87%），人工智能机器人中消费者更喜欢小度智能显示屏（ n = 163， p = 36. 63%）服务交付机器人中的机器形机器人搬运工（I）（ n = 178， p = 40.00%）。

 实际意义

这项研究为酒店管理者提供了启示，例如采用带有屏幕显示的机器人形状的人工智能，以满足消费者对机器人完成认知分析和情感社交任务的需求。

 原创性/价值

这项研究通过确定对不同类别服务机器人的形状和功能的偏好扩展了恐怖谷理论，并为有关酒店机器人的有限文献做出了贡献。