Cruzr: UBTECH’s guide robot at airport desks and hospital entrances

A wheeled guide robot with 15 degrees of freedom

Cruzr is a commercial service robot made by UBTECH Robotics of Shenzhen, China. The company describes it as a cloud-based intelligent commercial service robot. Its main functions are greeting visitors, guiding them, answering questions and promoting products. It has 15 degrees of freedom, 12 of them in the arms. It moves on wheels and runs up to 480 minutes per charge. The earliest record we found is a March 2018 article from Dubai that presented it as an office assistant. Some of the robot’s answers there had been entered in advance. At CES 2019 an upgraded version was shown, and it was to be sold in North America for the first time. The price had not been set.

Cases confirmed at airports and hospitals

In March 2020 UBTECH put three kinds of robots, Cruzr among them, into the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen, a designated COVID-19 hospital. The company said Cruzr is normally used in retail and hospitality and was modified for the hospital. In June that year Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium put a Cruzr Health at its entrance. Patients scan a QR code, and the robot checks their mask and takes their temperature. It speaks 34 languages, is rented for €1,000 a month and took over the job of a staff member who had watched the thermal cameras. In August 2024 UBTECH said Cruzr at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport gives information in eight languages and reminds travelers to sort their luggage before security. It said Cruzr is also used at the Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Kunming airports.

A plan for 1,000 units and a forecast of 1,500 are only numbers so far

In Thailand, UBTECH and the retailer Jaymart signed a memorandum to put 1,000 Cruzr units into its more than 300 stores, with a first deployment planned for late 2019. In April 2020 Japan’s Ignition Point forecast sales of 1,500 units over three years and said hospital trials would begin. These are plans and forecasts. We did not find how many were actually installed. The Euronews report on the Antwerp hospital quoted a remark that, asked whether it is reliable for detecting COVID-19, the answer is “not yet.”

A guide robot that took over a check staff used to do

Cruzr’s cases are clearest in checks at an entrance rather than in guidance. At the Belgian hospital the robot handled a fixed sequence of QR code, mask and temperature. The airport case is also a set message delivered in several languages. By contrast, some of the answers in the Dubai article had been entered in advance. Its use is confirmed more in repeating a set procedure than in open conversation. The figures on effect and cost savings were stated by the company or the buyers.

What does this robot take off people’s hands: the guiding itself, or the checking they used to do at the entrance?

What we haven’t confirmed

• Units sold or in operation, and the exact launch date (no record found before March 2018)
• Whether the 1,000-unit Jaymart plan and the 1,500-unit Japan forecast were actually installed
• Specific bank deployments matching the “smart bank” scenario on UBTECH’s page (no bank name or period found)
• Independent evaluation of the hospital and airport cases (this record relies on statements by the company and buyers)