Japan’s Shimizu Corp. and Yaskawa Electric Corp. have partnered to push what they’re calling the Smart Robotics Building project.

They opened their Smart Showroom this week to demonstrate proposed robotic technologies that could one day (soon?) use robots to act as receptionists, guides, delivery personnel, cleaners, guards and fill other mundane roles in place of humans.

The star of the Smart Showroom demo is SmartGuide, a mobile Yaskawa robot (pictured at right) programmed as a hotel worker, which can check you in to the hotel, answer your questions about the services available and check you out at the end of your stay.

All the robots, regardless of function, work closely with their building’s smart infrastructure which provides them with the information required to navagate, perform their assigned tasks and answer human inquiries. The building knows where all robots are at any given moment and what they’re up to.

The whole thing is at the demonstration stage, now, but Shimizu and Yaskawa hope to commercialize the Smart Robotics Building concept within the next decade.