Robots Assist Visitors at Pyeongchang Olympics Despite Limited Hours
A variety of robots are helping visitors and media at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics by providing directions, serving water, and vacuuming halls. These machines highlight South Korea's push to present itself as a tech-savvy nation.
Robots play a prominent role at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics by performing helpful tasks like dispensing water bottles, giving directions, and vacuuming busy hallways. These machines come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from sleek white vacuum spheres to colorful mechanical fish and models shaped like the Olympic mascot. Rather than mimicking human appearances, the robots showcase unique designs that help South Korea present itself as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy nation.
Two of the most sophisticated robots operate in highly crowded spaces to assist travelers and workers. At Seoul's Incheon International Airport, a robot named Airstar greets arriving visitors, answers questions, and successfully guides people to help desks or train stations. Meanwhile, at the main press center in Pyeongchang, a glossy white spherical vacuum roams the carpeted hallways and speaks to passersby in Korean as it cleans.
Despite their advanced capabilities and helpful duties, these robotic assistants do not operate around the clock. Visitors and media members quickly notice that the bots take regular breaks and only appear at specific intervals, such as the water-delivery robot that visits once an hour. This limited schedule serves as a reminder that while Olympic robots offer an impressive glimpse into the future of service technology, they still require downtime and are not quite ready to replace human workers entirely.