Humanoid Robot Debuts as Special Guide at Shanghai Tourism Festival Parade
On September 12, 2026, the Shanghai Tourism Festival Grand Parade is set to kick off, with 21 themed floats gathering at the Bund alongside 21 domestic and international performance teams. This year's parade will feature a special 'guide'—an embodied humanoid robot. Standing on the 'Embodied Smart Travel' float created by Tars Intelligence, the robot will accompany visitors along the Bund, providing real-time intelligent narration while making smoothies on site. This marks the first time humanoid robots have been deployed in the parade context of the Shanghai Tourism Festival.
The float is designed as a mobile 'tourist service station,' according to Li Li, Vice President of Donghao Lansheng Conference & Exhibition Group and General Manager of the Shanghai Tourism Festival Project. It integrates two typical applications of humanoid robots in cultural tourism—scenic narration and consumer services—into a single moving display.
During the parade, the float will traverse approximately 2.2 kilometers through the Bund's core area, passing tens of thousands of spectators. For the robot to deliver narration on a moving vehicle, it must cope with real-world disturbances such as GPS signal blockage from tall buildings, noisy crowds, and unstable wireless networks. Making smoothies on-site involves multiple steps—preparing ingredients, ensuring operational safety, and delivering the finished product—while maintaining precise movement in a shaky and windy environment, posing challenges to the robot's motion control and task planning capabilities.
Compared with the two extremes of factory and home settings, cultural tourism scenarios may offer a more pragmatic middle path for robot commercialization. Previously, humanoid robots were mainly deployed in industrial manufacturing and scientific research education, while tourism deployments were largely limited to guide screens or fixed points. According to data from the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the number of humanoid robots deployed in domestic cultural tourism scenarios in 2025 was around the thousand-unit level.
The advantage of tourism scenarios lies in their relatively controllable environments, clear operators, and strong brand display value. Deploying robots in city-level traffic events like the float parade serves both as a technical stress test and a public field demonstration. Its value does not lie in accomplishing an irreplaceable task, but in making the technology perceivable—transforming it from an abstract concept into a tangible presence through concrete, visible means.
After the Bund parade, the float will join the other 21 themed floats in rotating through ten districts of Shanghai for parades or exhibitions, ultimately converging at Guangfulin Cultural Heritage Park in Songjiang.
When a humanoid robot stands on a float and passes through the Bund, it carries not only a footnote to cultural tourism innovation but also a preliminary answer to the question: as robots expand their stage from laboratories and factories to broader public spaces, are they ready? This city-level 'roadshow' may well be a starting point to test that readiness.