For a week, two robots are driving around Eindhoven Airport. It is an unusual sight. They take travellers to the toilet, to the check-in desk or they tell a joke while waiting for the flight.
“Those jokes come from the robot developer in Amsterdam. We still have to put in some Brabant jokes,” said Davy Eijkens of Viggo Eindhoven Airport, which plans to test the robots for a year. The robots named Temi are in the terminal and tell travellers where the restaurants are, for example. Or they show you the way to the signs with flight information and the mailbox.
You notice them as soon as you enter the hall. One robot has a tie on and the other a scarf. “One is male, and the other is female. They get along very well. After a day, they were talking to each other. One said, ‘How can I help you,’ and the other said, ‘Happy New Year.’ I think they have a good relationship.”
Languages
The robots speak Dutch and English. By springtime, they must speak six languages, namely German, French, Spanish and Arabic. They must complement the flesh and blood hosts. “We are in the Brainport region. We were looking for new ways to offer services. Also because young people are flying more and more and are used to working with digital systems.” According to Eijkens, Eindhoven is the first airport to have this. “We are the first airport in Europe.”
Raymond Cuijpers is a human-robot researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology. He comes to see the robot. “I think it’s great. I do my research on robots and how they should interact with people. These are robots with eyes and gestures. They can nod to say ‘yes.’ Technology is advancing all the time.”
Vulnerable
“Five years ago, robots were expensive and fragile. It took a team of technicians to make sure they kept working if they fell. Now you can safely let robots drive around an airport on their own without fear of them crashing into people.”
Major role
According to expert Cuijpers, Robots are going to play an increasing role over the years. “Service robots are going to be seen in more and more places like airports. In business, robots are going to become more important in production processes.”
“In ten years you will also see more robots in healthcare. They are going to help people get through the day. They will help against loneliness. People in nursing homes will soon have a robot as a buddy. They will be specially developed for that purpose. Not only they will be there 24 hours a day, but also they can detect things that a caregiver cannot. Also, he can give a better quality of life by entertaining you.”
Smarter
Airport robots are not there yet. Travellers testing it this morning sometimes ask questions that the robot does not understand and thus cannot answer, such as “How long will my flight be?”.
Davy Eijkens of Viggo: “We looked in advance at which questions it should be able to answer. Questions that we hear very often. If a certain question is asked a hundred times in a month, we can see that. Then we know it has to be fed in there. We try to make them a little smarter every month.”
Source: Studio040
Translated by Chaitali Sengupta. She also gives online INBURGERING classes.
