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Luxury apartments in Los Angeles come with smart robot butlers

Luke Dormehl
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Relay Delivers to Hospitality
Ever wondered what kind of amenities you could expect if you rented a luxury apartment for $25,000 per month? California-based robotics company Savioke has your answer — and it’s a
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smart robot butler called Charley.
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Charley is a “Relay” model room service robot, capable of delivering everything from mail to takeout meals directly to your door. From next year it will be servicing the wealthy patrons of Los Angeles’ new upmarket Crescent Heights Ten Thousand building — marking Relay’s first deployment in a residential building.

To receive a visit from Charley, residents in the building will use iPads to place orders. When the item in question is delivered to the reception desk (by humans, at least for now), it can then be placed into the charge of one of a fleet of the Relay robots, which will then transport it to the resident.

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luxury apartment robot butler relay being loaded
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luxury apartment robot butler relay dock closeup
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luxury apartment robot butler relay front and back
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luxury apartment robot butler realy lid opening
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“Relay is a completely autonomous delivery robot,” Savioke CEO Steve Cousins told Digital Trends. “You put something in it, tell it where to go, and it will go there to deliver it, and then return to its docking station by itself. The Relay robot can ride in elevators, navigate its way to a person’s door, let them know that a delivery has arrived, and then open its lid for them when they answer the door.”

Cousins describes the robot as a “chain of custody solution” that can securely transport objects from one place to another. Over time, as services like drone delivery become more popular, he thinks robots like this will have an obvious use case as part of the delivery logistics chain.

“It works through a mix of AI, with planning and perception algorithms to let it move around in the world, and human intelligence, with a call center it can ask for help if it runs into any problems,” Cousins continued.

He noted that the decision to outfit the luxurious Ten Thousand high-rise, located at 10000 Santa Monica Boulevard, with the robots came down to a bit of serendipity, in which a member of Crescent Heights’ senior staff stayed at a hotel which had Relay robots in operation — and decided that the concept would work well for the new luxury living space.

Charley the Relay robot isn’t the only bit of tech at Ten Thousand, either. The upscale apartment block also includes a fully stocked gym, swimming pool with underwater speakers, dog-wash machine, and more.

Now does anyone want to donate to a GoFundMe account to help us get an apartment there?

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Luke Dormehl
Luke Dormehl
Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
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