In October 2023, An incident with the battery of an electric scooter It caused the closure of a subway line in the capital of Spain for three hours. That led the authorities to prohibit The entrance of these devices to public transport Until 2027. In China, there are other battery devices that are already driving at ease by the subway network: robots.
Which until not long ago was science fiction material, Today is a reality. The world is pushing the development of robots and, while until recently the demonstrations by companies such as Boston Dynamics They were limited to bailongos robots focused on professional environmentstoday what come to us are machines created for all types of ends.
Boxing robots, football robotshumanoid robots that We can buy for what a car costs and even Robot dogs for blind people. And something that everyone has in common is that they are already being tested, one way or another, In China. The latter is an army of robots that already go from side to side for the Shenzhen subwaytaking trains and rising in elevators.
And it has all the meaning of the world.
Robots assault the subway
A few days ago, 41 company robots VX Logistics They began to circulate through different Shenzhen Metro lines. They have a processor that allows artificial intelligence tasks, have Lidar sensors With “viewing” panoramic and that AI work allows them to make decisions in real time to make the best decision when it comes to their destination.
The goal of this robot squad is to bring supplies to stores 7-Eleven located inside the stations and, for this, they not only take the subway: they are also capable of going up and down in a totally autonomous way and without supervision by the elevators of the stations.
With considerable size and an aesthetic that resembles that of Robots-Camareros They are appearing in some Spanish restaurants, these machines They can load up to 130 kilos of weight. At the moment, it is a pilot program to see how they manage to distribute among the more than 100 stores 7-eleven distributed by the Shenzhen network, with nine million of daily customers, but the goal is to expand their scope.
There are elements to take into account in all this. VX Logistics is part of Vanke, a Chinese real estate giant who is also co -owner of the Shenzhen Metro. But, beyond the marketing that has “free” more than 40 autonomous robots for the subway, as we read in SCMP It is something focused on solving a classic network problem: the refueling of stores.
Li Yanyan is a manager of one of these stores and, as he explains to the local medium SZ News, “the distributors had to park on the surface, download the merchandise and take it manually to the inside. Now, with the robots, it will be easier and more comfortable.” They don’t say What will happen to those deliverymenif they will be in charge of providing the goods to the robots or if their function will be reduced more.
What is known is that, as the company itself has communicated, the robots will be perfected based on their real -world performance. Now, apparently, These robots only operate in valley hoursin which less people are using the network. And less bad that they only operate in valley hours, because agile, what is said agile, are not.
What has caused is that the first days of robots work, travelers are They will look or take pictures. The robots were already prepared for this, with a screen that shows a friendly “face” when it crosses someone.
We will see how they develop and how long it will take to see similar robots in other stations, but what is clear is that China is pushing strong in the robotics segment For the “day to day” and Shenzhen is one of the lungs of his industry, with approximately 1,000 robotics companies only in that city, 18 of them Focused to humanoid robotics.
Images | VX Logistics
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