The explosion of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has sparked many people's imagination. The technology is now being used in many different sectors. Our reporter Yang Chengxi looks at one of the applications.

If you own a cleaning robot, you may have experienced this scenario: that cluster of cat hair has been bugging you all morning, but you simply can't be bothered to sweep it up yourself; after all, what's the point of having a robot? So, you wait for the device to finally stumble upon it.

Oh come on! This presents a conundrum, leading to a question that has become increasingly popular in 2024:

YANG CHENGXI Beijing "Can AI solve that?"

To find the answer, I went to China's high-tech hub of Hangzhou.

YANG CHENGXI Hangzhou "I am not littering. This bottle will become important later on in the story."

This company claims to make a SMART cleaning robot that integrates AI.

CHEN JUNBO, Founder, Udeer·AI "It is really awkward for you that you just cannot tell your robot to come over and take care of the mess just in front of you."

Yes, that's my point exactly! OK, now show me how your robot does it.

(How does AI make this robot smart?）

CHEN JUNBO, Founder, Udeer·AI "This is what we provide here. This is a general robot's brain."

Atop an otherwise conventional cleaning vehicle rests a device equipped with cameras and sensors. These components transmit data to a processing unit that's embedded with a ChatGPT-like large language model called Tongyi Qianwen, created by China's tech giant Alibaba. As with all such AI tools:

CHEN JUNBO, Founder, Udeer·AI "We can simply tell the robots what you want in natural human language, and it can understand it."

Let's see if it can pick up the bottle I just threw away, just by us telling it to.

(Engineer: pick up the water bottle in front of building 3)

YANG CHENGXI Hangzhou "Now this is a live feed. It's now received a command. It's now on the move."

As the camera locked onto the bottle, the sweepers activated automatically.

YANG CHENGXI Hangzhou "Wow it actually did it. It knows where building 3 is. It recognizes the bottle, it did what it's supposed to."

Ever since the explosion of generative AI, many people have become acquainted with its artistic and entertainment applications. However, it appears that robots like this one are an example of how it's increasingly being used for industrial purposes.

CHEN JUNBO, Founder, Udeer·AI "Robots of logistics, robots of patrol, robots of auto charging like that."

Another company in Hangzhou is employing Tongyi Qianwen to imbue their robotic arm with the intelligence to comprehend and carry out commands such as "bake a cake in the microwave". These advancements merging generative AI with robotics represent one step in China's ongoing technology upgrades that experts say will present enormous economic potential.