Robotics company RobotLAB recently opened a new warehouse and showroom in Las Vegas, offering their four-meter-tall creations to the city’s casinos, resorts, and restaurants. According to the Dallas company, robots can clean hotel rooms, serve cocktails, provide security services, and provide information and directions. Not only that, ‘bots can also sing, dance, and give punches.
“Robots bring automation to repetitive tasks — such as serving food, cleaning, and more,” RobotLAB Las Vegas owner Ketan Vaidya tells Mashable. “Instead of workers doing menial, back-breaking work, robots can do it, so workers can focus on providing good service to their customers.”
While some Vegas visitors may balk at the idea of housekeepers and artificial robots, the new and potentially low-cost security can ease the pain – and robots in Vegas aren’t exactly new, as artificial bars have operated in the city for years. . It’s especially difficult for RobotLAB, and similar companies hoping to make strides in the service industry, where the human workforce that said “low work” will greet potential replacements for robots.
In Las Vegas, the powerful UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union Local 226 has been expecting companies like RobotLAB to set up shop and wants “technical language” in their contracts with major Strip casinos.
Celebrating at the new RobotLAB Las Vegas location.
Celebrating at the new RobotLAB Las Vegas location. Credit: Courtesy RobotLAB
“The Culinary Union negotiated a strong agreement in 2018 to win a technical language that protects workers if the company introduces new technology and is used to communicate about software, equipment and automation,” Bethany Khan, spokesperson and director of communications. & digital strategy for UNITE HERE, he tells Mashable. “In 2023, those rights have been protected and expanded.”
The latest contract guarantees advance notice if new technology is introduced that could affect jobs and increases in pay for identity service, extended health care, and pension fund contributions for workers laid off due to technological change, according to Khan. RobotLAB has yet to officially sign a deal with the Strip, but Vaidya says they are in “discussions with several casinos.” According to Khan, all the resorts on the Strip — like Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, and Bellagio — are integrated, meaning RobotLAB has to meet with UNITE HERE representatives for demos and chats before they can collect your luggage or make your bed.
Currently, RobotLAB is finding success in Vegas with restaurant chains like Kura Revolving Sushi Bar and Sourdough & Co., which are using the company’s delivery and serving robots. Small businesses can draw on RobotLAB’s robots through their rental process, which Vaidya says runs between $20 and $40 a day. Regarding the purchase price, Vaidya says that “prices vary depending on the answer” but KLAS reported that the robots can cost “like a new car.”
RobotLAB Las Vegas General Manager Jacob Fisher believes the products will create human jobs and replace them, telling KLAS, “There will always be someone needed to maintain and operate the robots. So we’ll just have robot conductors.”
Fisher’s response may be cold comfort to many UNITE HERE members, but the union found language in their 2018 agreement that ensures that casino-hotels provide “mandatory free retraining to use new technology for current jobs” and “get and mandatory free training when new jobs are created due to of automation and technology,” according to Khan.