Robot customs officers debut in South China ports

GUANGZHOU - Ten intelligent robots have started to work as customs officers at three ports in the cities of Zhuhai and Zhongshan, Southern China's Guangdong province on Saturday, according to the local customs office.

They are the first batch of intelligent robots, to be used by Chinese customs at the ports of Gongbei, Hengqin and Zhongshan. The robots, named Xiao Hai, have state-of-the-art perception technology and are able to listen, speak, learn, see and walk.

Based on a specialized customs database, the robots can answer questions in 28 languages and dialects, including Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese.

There are some particular 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 people and raise an alarm, according to Zhao Min, director of Gongbei customs.