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In yet another push into the future, Hong Kong is about to launch the city’s first convenience store that’s run fully by a robot. This will be Beijing-based robotics firm Galbot’s first venture outside of mainland China, after already establishing a robot retail space in the Chinese capital.
The approximately 97-sqft capsule store will be located along the Hung Hom waterfront, and managed by a 173-cm-tall G1 robot named ‘Xiao Gai’. Featuring a vaguely humanoid upper body, the robot also has a 190-cm arm span and is designed to stock shelves, pick inventory items, and handle customer checkouts. It can also understand voice commands, with the Hong Kong robot offering multilingual interaction as is befitting of our international crowd.
Backed by the Hong Kong Investment Corporation, this robot store manager marks a major step in efforts to embed more of AI in everyday life, allowing people to interact with the technology in more tangible ways. Just don’t fall in love with the G1 or somehow make it decide that humans need to be eradicated!
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