In this April 10, 2017, photo, an LG Electronics’s cleaning robot moves to clean the floor at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea. AP
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Give these robots a gold medal.
While the athletes are wowing fans with their world-class abilities in skiing, skating and snowboarding, the big stars at the media centers around the Olympics are the fancy gadgets buzzing and whirring through the hallways.
Local companies teamed with South Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning to put the country’s best and most innovative technology on display during the Winter Games.
There’s a robot cleaner that looks a lot like R2-D2 of the “Star Wars” movie franchise, but this husky gizmo vacuums the carpeted floors and keeps them spic and span _ and without any sarcastic beeps and blips.
Just outside the main dining hall in the Gangneung media village, a friendly and helpful little gadget plays music and approaches projects the weather forecast for the area, along with the daily event schedules for the games.
A short snack robot zips around the hallways in the media centers that acts as a mobile vending machine, offering items such as bottled water.
Also on display in media center 2 in the Alpensia Resort is a fish tank filled with, you guessed it, robot fish. They swim around and act just like real sea critters – except that they don’t need to be fed and there’s no messy cleanup.
Several of the robots had already been tested over the last year at Incheon International Airport, which also has a few multilingual robot guides _ particularly helpful as tourists, fans and journalists from hundreds of countries descend upon the area for the Pyeongchang Games.