Robots wow travelers over weeklong holiday

Robots poured tea, played table tennis and answered children's questions about marine animals at a theme park in South China during this year's National Day holiday from Oct 1 to 7. Elsewhere, machines served coffee and ice cream, helped tourists scale mountains and prepared millions of meals.

The holiday rush gave China's robotics manufacturers an opportunity to introduce their machines "face to face" with consumers, as tourist attractions, retailers and restaurants explored new ways to draw visitors and enhance services.

At Chimelong Spaceship Park in Hengqin, Guangdong province, more than 300 robots developed by Shanghai-based AgiBot were deployed across over 100 interactive locations, welcoming visitors and providing guided tours, science education and entertainment.

"I didn't expect robots to pour tea or play table tennis," said Li Linlin, who was visiting from Guangzhou, Guangdong, with her two sons. "We originally came to see the spaceship-themed attractions and marine animals, but the two boys were most fascinated by the robots that could chat and play with them."

The deployment, which began in September, forms part of a 10-year strategic partnership between AgiBot and Chimelong Group. Rather than renting machines for holiday performances, the park purchased them for permanent use, allowing the partners to develop new attractions and refine the technology through daily interactions with visitors.

"Technology is fast becoming a new tourism draw for China," said Wu Liyun, a professor at the China Academy of Culture and Tourism at Beijing International Studies University, adding that foreign visitors increasingly seek to experience how smart technologies are being integrated into everyday life.

The growing interest is opening commercial opportunities for China's robotics industry, particularly in tourism, retail and other consumer services.

An estimate based on publicly announced projects suggests that nearly 30 robotics firms had entered these sectors, with thousands of humanoid and other embodied robots in use during the weeklong holiday.

Such applications are also a focus of China's broader push to use technology to expand spending on services. Guidelines released by the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments on Oct 19 called for wider commercial applications of embodied artificial intelligence, as well as new cultural and tourism products and smart services using AI and other technologies.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has selected 14 projects to pilot AI applications in the sector, aiming to develop approaches that can be adopted nationwide, Zhou Hanping, an official with the ministry's industrial development department, said at a news conference on the policy.

For robot manufacturers, daily use at tourist attractions provides a practical test of both technical performance and consumer appeal.

Wang Chuang, senior vice-president at AgiBot, told Xinhua Finance that simple games such as rock-paper-scissors and table tennis had attracted greater visitor interest than some technically demanding demonstrations. The company therefore plans to adjust the activities regularly based on visitor feedback and usage data.

AgiBot also aims to make its robots less dependent on human supervision. Xiong Yan, co-president of AgiBot, said the park initially needed roughly one staff member for every three robots, although staffing requirements varied by specialized tasks performed. The company aims to reduce that requirement to one employee for every 10 robots, and eventually one for every 20, through improved automation and operational management.

Reducing supervision and maintenance costs could make large-scale deployments more commercially feasible.

Other manufacturers are expanding into retail. Chinese robotics maker Galbot has introduced more than 200 automated retail stations at locations including Beijing's Summer Palace, West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and Gulangyu Island in Xiamen, Fujian province. Robots at the stations handle customer orders and product deliveries.

Wearable exoskeleton robots are serving a different need — helping tourists walk longer distances with less physical effort at destinations including Taishan Mountain in Shandong province and Xi'an's ancient city wall in Shaanxi province.

Beyond tourist attractions, specialized robots are already performing high-volume tasks hidden from customer view in restaurant kitchens, where efficiency and consistency matter more than entertainment.

Chinese cooking robot manufacturer Xianglu Robotics said 12,741 of its automated cooking machines were working across 334 cities during the holiday, completing nearly 6 million stir-frying tasks.

The company estimates that the output was enough to serve approximately 18 million diners, based on an average of three people per cooking cycle.

In a written response to China Daily, Xianglu said the cooking figures were collected through its operating data platform, while batch sizes ranged from meals for individual restaurant customers to larger quantities used in institutional catering.

It said cooking volumes had risen year-on-year, largely because more machines had been installed, although it did not provide comparable per-machine utilization figures.

The wider commercial potential of robots in tourism is still being tested. Liang Zengxian, a tourism professor at Sun Yat-sen University, told Southern Finance that robots could complement rather than replace human performers, providing new forms of interaction and entertainment.

Liang said integrating robotics with tourism could bring measurable economic benefits, although more real-world applications would be needed to fully demonstrate their commercial value.