Robot Shop Assistants to Staff Huacheng Study AI Kiosks in Guangzhou This Year

The second Guangdong Artificial Intelligence Application Matchmaking Conference was held in Guangzhou on September 22. At a session dedicated to AI plus manufacturing, Information Times, a publication under the Guangzhou Daily Press Group, signed a scenario cooperation agreement with Cloudbutterfly Technology (云蝶科技) for the Huacheng Study AI Embodied Intelligence Kiosk.

It marks the second on-site deployment signed by the two parties, following their AI Life Home newsstand collaboration at the 2026 China International SME Fair (中博会).

From the AI newsstand at the 2026 SME Fair to the Huacheng Study AI embodied intelligence kiosk unveiled at this conference, the partnership between Information Times and Cloudbutterfly Technology has continued to advance. At the SME Fair, a robot shop assistant handed a good book to passersby from a newsstand.

The Huacheng Study AI embodied intelligence kiosk signed at this conference is expected to be deployed within the year, with the robot assistant formally taking up its post to sell books, beverages and Guangzhou cultural and creative products. The signing signals a shift for embodied intelligence from a single retail scenario into more routine public services, including reading services, convenience retail, information queries and health outreach.

At the Huacheng kiosk, Cloudbutterfly's robots can provide residents with everyday, routine services: borrowing books and buying cultural products, with the robot fetching items and handling checkout; self-service purchase of drinks, Guangzhou IP gifts and creative goods, with the robot delivering goods and settling payment; information queries such as bus routes, park guides and government service directions; and simple health and wellness knowledge lookups.

No new venues are needed. These services rely on revitalizing and upgrading existing newsstands. Luo Chongjian, vice president of Cloudbutterfly Technology, said AI will be within reach at the Huacheng Study and that every station will become a window for experiencing AI. Placing AI services where residents walk and shop, he said, allows long-term regular operation and continuous refinement of AI in real public-service scenarios.

For the embodied intelligence industry, the value of this signing goes beyond one station. Under the theme of connecting a thousand industries and empowering a hundred sectors, the conference's signing ceremony for large-scale embodied robot applications also released a batch of benchmark projects, including an intelligent service robot project for library settings and a humanoid service robot application project for Guangzhou Metro stations.

Among these scenarios, the community is the most distinctive and the hardest to crack. Robots entering community spaces face residents of different ages and needs directly: whether elderly people can use them, whether children dare approach them, and who takes over when service is interrupted. These seemingly trivial questions are precisely what determines whether embodied intelligence can truly be deployed.

In May this year, Information Times launched the AI Life Home project. On September 4, a city co-creation project, AI Life Home: Finding 1,001 New Ways of AI Living, guided by the Guangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission and hosted by the Guangzhou Daily Press Group together with the Guangdong Artificial Intelligence Industry Association, was officially launched. Using an AI in seven settings format, the project leverages the community, school and commercial-district reach of Information Times' micro-community e-home platform to roll out three interactive scenarios: AI scenario deployment, AI experience officers and AI trial teams. The Huacheng Study AI embodied intelligence kiosk is one of the first projects to land under this co-creation initiative.