Cheetah Mobile delegated sales responsibilities to its new retail robot at the recent Hong Kong Electronics Fair. Dubbed the Cheetah GreetBot, the new AI-powered robot was built in collaboration with OrionStar Technology and uses speech recognition to interact with customers in real time.

“We believe AI and robotics will upgrade every industry, so we are building a whole-body AI technology chain to lead the way forward with new products for businesses and consumers,” said Cheetah Chairman and CEO Sheng Fu. “Cheetah and OrionStar have created an open robot ecosystem by building the full-chain AI technology as well as the robotics hardware.”

GreetBot also comes equipped with a navigation system and facial and body recognition capabilities, allowing it to answer questions and guide customers in a variety of customer service situations. At the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, Cheetah used the robot to sell its CM Translator, a handheld AI translator that was released in China in 2018 and offers translation services for six different languages.

According to Cheetah, the GreetBot has already been deployed in a number of shopping malls and commercial centers in China, and can be configured for customer-facing roles in supermarkets, hotels, courtrooms, banks, and other settings.

The new robot points to the growing interest in retail-oriented AI solutions. CyberLink and Syscom recently launched a new retail robot with facial recognition tech, while Bossa Nova acquired HawXeye over the summer to forward plans for its own customer service robot.