Advanced technologies including facial recognition and virtual reality will be used in Beijing's 2022 Winter Olympics, with experts stressing that technological innovation will be the icing on the cake for the upcoming games.
"China's domestically-designed unmanned artificial intelligence (AI) bus will be put into use in 2022. The AI bus doesn't have a steering wheel or accelerator and brake pedals. It receives orders from mobile apps and can pick up passengers automatically," Yang Diange, Dean of Department of Automotive Engineering of Tsinghua University, told People's Daily.
Buses are not the only means of transportation that uses AI technologies. According to People's Daily, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Intercity Railway, which connects China's capital and Zhangjiakou in Heibei province, has been installed with doping detection equipment and smart display screens, as well as a high-speed Wi-Fi network. Passengers can watch live shows of the games on the train, as well as browse the Internet.
The new intercity railway, which will be completed in 2019, is also the world's first high-speed railway with a speed of 350 km/h that can resist low temperatures and strong storms. It will reduce travel time from the current three hours to one.
"The cold weather in Beijing will not affect the high-speed rail. All passengers will be sent to their destination on time," an official told People's Daily.
