BEIJING: Ten robots have started working as customs officers at three ports in China’s Guangdong province, authorities said on Sunday.
They are the first batch of intelligent robots to be used by Chinese customs at the ports of Gongbei, Hengqin and Zhongshan, Xinhua news agency reported.
The robots, named Xiao Hai, have state-of-the-art perception technology and are able to listen, speak, learn, see and walk.
The robots can answer questions in 28 languages and dialects, including Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese.
There are some problems they cannot solve, and customs officials said they will link the robots to their customer service hotline in the future.
With face recognition technology, the robots can detect suspicious activity and raise an alarm, according to Zhao Min, director of Gongbei customs.