Professor Thorsten Gruber contributed to a research paper that was successfully published in the prestigious Journal of Service Management. The title of the paper is "Brave new world: service robots in the frontline".

The paper started discussion on the service sector at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialisation similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

The contribution of this paper published in the prestigious Journal of Service Management is threefold.

• First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate.
• Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviours as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model.
• Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

Read the full paper here.

Congratulations, Professor Gruber!