China’s robots step into real-world roles, from cleaning to directing traffic

Robots appear in settings from dirty kitchens to dangerous steel mills as country pushes development of embodied AI

A cleaning service that launched in March on 58.com, a Chinese classifieds platform, pairs a human cleaner with a wheeled robot and an on-site engineer, according to the Chinese newspaper Economic Observer.

Each session runs three hours and costs 149 yuan (US$22), the same price as a standard human-only session, according to the report, citing an online comment. The robot handles repetitive tasks such as wiping tables and cleaning floors, while the human cleaner tackles harder-to-reach spots, scraping grease from crevices and removing mould from tile grout. One cleaner paired with a robot said the machine could handle about 30 per cent of the workload, according to the Economic Observer’s report.

Wang Qian, founder and CEO of X Square Robot, said deploying robots in domestic settings allowed the company to collect real-world data, according to the report.

Source: News - South China Morning Post