Robots writing calligraphy, playing table tennis with visitors, competing in rock-paper-scissors, and even serving as tour guides who walk and talk with guests through venues... Embodied AI technology that once appeared only in laboratories and industry exhibitions is now emerging from testing scenarios on a large scale and deeply integrating into real-world public tourism and cultural consumption settings.
On September 24, the large indoor theme park Chimelong Spaceship in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, reopened with a fresh look. Reporters on site observed that multiple types of embodied AI robots in different forms have been deployed across various scenarios within the park, including performances, science education, guided tours, and interactive entertainment. The park's operator, Guangdong Chimelong Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chimelong Group"), confirmed to reporters that the embodied AI products introduced at the park all come from Zhiyuan Innovation (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhiyuan Innovation"), with a procurement volume exceeding 300 units.
"We have adopted a procurement model, and these embodied AI robots will continue to operate within the park going forward," said Jiang Minling, Vice President of Chimelong Group and General Manager of Hengqin Chimelong Resort.
Hundreds of Robots "On Duty"
Walking into Chimelong Spaceship, embodied AI robots have become the new "staff members" in many areas. In the interactive zones, robots use flexible robotic arms to engage visitors in immersive activities such as table tennis matches, fun rock-paper-scissors games, and calligraphy creation. In the science exhibition areas, robots can move to different exhibits to provide explanations. Meanwhile, robots also handle intelligent navigation and route guidance services. At the opening ceremony, several robots joined professional performers in completing dance and other entertainment programs.
According to park staff, more than 300 Zhiyuan robots have entered the park, operating regularly at over 100 interactive experience points, covering scenarios such as cultural entertainment performances, science education and research, guided tours and shopping assistance, service retail, intelligent companion tours, hotels, and sports competitions.
Zhiyuan Innovation stated that the deployment of over 300 robots at Chimelong Spaceship represents one of the company's largest-scale deployments in a tourism and culture scenario to date. On the opening day, Zhiyuan Innovation's 20,000th embodied AI robot, the A3 Ultra, was officially delivered to Chimelong Group.
"2026 will be the inaugural year of embodied AI deployment," said a relevant company executive. The two parties have also jointly established the "Chimelong x Zhiyuan Embodied AI Tourism Joint Research Institute" and are collaborating with China Mobile on the "world's first large-scale 5G-A embodied AI innovation application in a tourism scenario" to accelerate the commercial implementation of embodied AI.
Notably, despite deploying hundreds of embodied AI products, the preparation time for both parties was short. Wang Chuang, Partner at Zhiyuan Innovation and President of the General Business Division, told reporters that from contract signing to implementation, Zhiyuan Innovation and Chimelong Group completed the deployment of the first 300 robots in approximately one month.
Compared to standardized industrial scenarios, tourism and cultural scenarios place higher demands on embodied AI technology. Wang Chuang explained that venues have dense crowds, complex lighting environments, and significant on-site noise interference, while visitors of different ages and speaking different languages generate a large number of unpredictable questions. These factors all affect robots' target recognition and voice interaction capabilities. At the same time, hundreds of robots operating simultaneously impose strict requirements on the park's network stability and security.
From the first-phase operational feedback, market experiences are showing new characteristics. "It's not the features with the highest technical difficulty that are most popular with visitors," Wang Chuang said. Relatively simple but highly interactive activities such as rock-paper-scissors and table tennis are more likely to attract visitors, especially children. In the future, Zhiyuan Innovation will continue to monitor the actual usage rates and visitor feedback for each location and each robot. For locations with low usage rates, the company will continuously iterate interactive content and optimize application scenarios, pushing robots from being a temporary novelty to becoming content products capable of long-term operation.
Regarding the fact that staff are still assisting robot operations on site, Jiang Minling stated that the current staffing configuration takes into account both visitor experience considerations and safety assurance, as well as the need for initial operational adjustments. As robot operations become more mature and park staff become more familiar with robot behavior, the need for manual assistance is expected to gradually decrease.
Xiong Yan, Partner at Zhiyuan Innovation and President of the Central R&D Division, told reporters that robots currently use 360-degree perception and other methods for obstacle avoidance, and also employ compliant control to reduce impact after collisions. At the same time, since some interactions still require cloud computing support, the park has also optimized its network for robots, including ensuring robot business operations through 5G network slicing and other methods.
Moving Away from Short-Term Rental Models
In recent years, although robot performances and interactive experiences have frequently appeared at various exhibitions, commercial events, and scenic area shows, most have adopted temporary rental or short-term exhibition models, with equipment removed immediately after events conclude. Whether embodied AI can form a stable business model when deployed in entertainment scenarios has been one of the industry's key concerns. The collaboration between Chimelong Group and Zhiyuan Innovation will explore this question.
Jiang Minling stated that Chimelong Group has adopted a procurement model for embodied AI products and has signed a ten-year long-term strategic cooperation agreement with Zhiyuan Innovation. The deployed embodied AI products will become assets of Chimelong Group. From an operational perspective, Chimelong Group needs to improve robot usage efficiency and explore more scenarios for sustained use.
From an asset management perspective, Wang Chuang believes that whether the robot business in tourism scenarios can continue to expand ultimately comes back to input and output. On the cost side, the service life of embodied AI, daily operations and maintenance personnel input, network and communication costs, and component wear will all affect customers' actual usage costs. On the revenue side, Zhiyuan Innovation also hopes to conduct more exploration. For example, if embodied AI performance content can be continuously iterated so that visitors want to revisit the theme park at regular intervals to experience new content, it could help theme parks further enhance visitor loyalty and ultimately generate incremental visitor traffic.
Jiang Minling further stated that as the number of overseas visitors to the park increases, multilingual services could be one of the possibilities for embodied AI to create commercial value. If relying on human staff to cover multilingual services, the park would need to employ staff speaking different languages, whereas embodied AI, through AI capabilities, can provide interactive experiences in multiple languages and even dialects.
Reporters learned that for this segment of business innovation, Zhiyuan Innovation and Chimelong Group will conduct exploration through the "Chimelong x Zhiyuan Embodied AI Tourism Joint Research Institute." Currently, both parties are considering further applying embodied AI to scenarios such as parades, family shows, and performances. "In the future, some robot movements and performance content can be reused across different parks under Chimelong Group, which will reduce content innovation costs while also potentially forming new content output capabilities," Jiang Minling said.