HANGZHOU, China: Gliding silently through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s futuristic “FlyZoo” hotel, black disc-shaped robots about a metre in height deliver food and drop off fresh towels.

The robots are part of a suite of high-tech tools that Alibaba says drastically cuts the hotel’s cost of human labor and eliminates the need for guests to interact with other people.

Formally opened to the public last month, the 290-room FlyZoo is an incubator for technology Alibaba wants to sell to the hotel industry in the future and an opportunity to showcase its prowess in artificial intelligence.

It is also an experiment that tests consumer comfort levels with unmanned commerce in China - a country where intrusive data-sharing technology is readily tolerated and often met with enthusiasm. Reuters