Robotics company makes aggressive push into Las Vegas service industry
Robotics company RobotLAB recently opened up a new warehouse and showroom in Las Vegas, offering up their four-foot-tall synthetic creations to the city’s casinos, resorts, and restaurants. According to the Dallas-based company, the robots can clean hotel rooms, serve up cocktails, provide security services, and give information and directions. Not only that, the ‘bots can also sing, dance, and give fist bumps.
“Robots bring automation to repetitive tasks — such as serving food, cleaning, and more,” RobotLAB Las Vegas partner Ketan Vaidya tells Mashable. “Instead of employees doing low value, back-breaking work, robots can do it, so that employees can focus their attention on providing excellent service to their customers.”
While some Vegas visitors may blanch at the idea of robot housekeepers and synthetic concierges, the novelty and potential trickle-down cost savings may lessen the impersonal sting — and robots in Vegas are not exactly new, as synthetic bartenders have operated in the city for years. More difficult for RobotLAB, and similar companies hoping to make moves in the service industry, is how human workers already doing said “low value” work will greet their potential robot replacements.
In Las Vegas, the powerful UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union Local 226 has been anticipating companies like RobotLAB setting up shop and demanded “innovative technology language” in their contracts with the Strip’s big resort casinos.
“The Culinary Union negotiated a strong contract in 2018 to win innovative technology language that protects workers when the company brings in new technology and has been utilized to bargain over software, use of devices, and automation,” Bethany Khan, spokesperson and director of communications & digital strategy for UNITE HERE, tells Mashable. “In 2023, those rights were protected and expanded.”
The most recent contract guarantees advanced notification when new technology is introduced that may impact jobs and an increase in service recognition pay, extended health care, and pension fund contributions for workers laid off due to technology changes, according to Khan. RobotLAB has not publicly inked a deal with a notable Strip property, but Vaidya says they are having “conversations with several casinos.” As Khan points out, all the big resorts on the Strip — like Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, and the Bellagio — are unionized, meaning RobotLAB must meet with UNITE HERE representatives for demos and conversations before automatons are taking your luggage or making your bed.
For now, RobotLAB is finding success in Vegas with restaurant chains like Kura Revolving Sushi Bar and Sourdough & Co., which are utilizing the company’s delivery and serving robots. Smaller businesses may gravitate to RobotLAB's robots through their leasing options, which Vaidya says go for between $20-40 a day. As far as purchase price, Vaidya says "costs vary depending on solution" but KLAS reported the robots can cost "as much as a new car."
RobotLAB Las Vegas General Manager Jacob Fisher believes the products will create human jobs along with replacing them, telling KLAS, “There’s always going to be a person needed to maintain and service the robots. So we are just going to have robot conductors.”
Fisher's response is probably cold comfort to most UNITE HERE members, but the union did obtain language in their 2018 contract that ensures unionized casino-resorts provide "mandatory free re-training to use new technology for current jobs" and "access and mandatory free job training if there are new jobs that are created due to automation and technology," according to Khan.