MTravel China
A wheeled service robot moving away down a hotel corridor, motion-blurred
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High tech

Robots doing service jobs服务机器人

The most common first encounter is a hotpot restaurant where a wheeled robot brings the plates to the table, which is now unremarkable enough in Chinese cities that nobody looks up. Beyond that: hotel delivery robots that take an item to your room and call the lift themselves, unmanned convenience stores that charge you as you walk out, automated pharmacies, and increasingly humanoid robots in demonstration roles — Unitree's machines have become a fixture of Chinese variety television. The point is less any individual machine than how quickly the novelty wore off.

What to do

  • Walk into a Unitree shop rather than waiting for a trade show. Beijing's is in a Wangfujing mall and Shanghai has one too, and the machines are on the floor rather than behind glass.
  • Order in a restaurant and then watch the room instead of the robot. That nobody looks up is the actual finding.