Beijing parks deploy robots to patrol, and uncivilized behavior by visitors will be caught in the act

On the eve of the Spring Equinox, the mountain peach trees at the National Botanical Garden (North Garden) are blooming one after another, attracting many visitors out for spring outings and flower viewing. In front of the Wanshengyuan greenhouse plaza, intelligent robots are “patrolling,” providing friendly reminders and smart management of uncivilized behaviors.

On March 19, the citywide promotion event for park civility, “Build a Garden City, Advocate Civilized Park Visits,” was held at the National Botanical Garden (North Garden), with sub-venues set up at the Lu County Ancient City Ruins Park, Ditan Park, Madiang Park, and others.

On March 19, at the National Botanical Garden (North Garden), an intelligent robot demonstrated a “patrol” scene. Photo by Xue Jun from The Beijing News.

Robots can identify 20 types of uncivilized behaviors

Recently, as more visitors come out to enjoy spring flowers, uncivilized behaviors such as breaking branches and feeding wild animals have also increased. “This area is a forest fire prevention zone; smoking is prohibited throughout the park. Please extinguish your cigarette and do not bring lighters or fire sources into the park.” During the demonstration, when the robot “detected” someone smoking, it issued a reminder.

It is understood that to manage the problem of smoking in parks, the robot is equipped with high-precision smoking behavior recognition algorithms that can keenly detect subtle features such as holding a cigarette and smoking motions. When smoking behavior is detected, it immediately locks onto the target and plays a voice message on-site to gently persuade. If the smoker does not extinguish the cigarette, the robot will continue to “follow” and remind them.

“Since the Xiangsheng Ecological Patrol Robot was introduced at Yuyuantan Park in 2024, its inspection capabilities have been continuously upgraded. The categories of uncivilized behaviors it can recognize have expanded from 11 to over 20, including fishing by the water, cycling in the park, littering, smoking, and not cleaning up pet feces. It can provide real-time voice warnings and automatically report incidents,” said the head of the robot company. In ecological management, the robot has been used at Yuyuantan Park for plant pest and disease inspections, automatically photographing key trees like cherry blossoms and analyzing them with AI, providing precise diagnostic data for horticultural departments, and effectively reducing manual patrol efforts.

Currently, can the robot identify uncivilized behaviors such as visitors baiting birds for photos? The person in charge said that the algorithm currently does not support baiting detection, but in the future, it could be trained using features like baiting devices and abnormal bird feeding behaviors. After training, it can be deployed to robots, which will take about a month.

Fourteen municipal parks will use robots this year

As a highlight of this year’s campaign to promote civilized park visits, technological empowerment combines “gentle guidance” with “rigid constraints.” Liu Guodong, deputy director of the Beijing Park Management Center, said that by 2026, around 20 robots and smart devices—including patrol robots, intelligent explanation robots, internet insect monitoring lamps, and smart life-saving rings—will be deployed across 14 municipal parks.

In recent years, Beijing has steadily entered a new stage of developing a “city of a thousand parks,” with parks becoming joyful spaces for citizens’ leisure and an important window to showcase the capital’s civilized image. During the event, the Beijing Park Management Center and the Municipal Urban Management Law Enforcement Bureau issued reminders for civil park visits to the public, and park visitor representatives read the “Beijing Park Visitor Code 2026,” jointly advocating for civilized park visits.

During the event, the main venue and sub-venues launched a series of special activities. Through display boards, banners, posters, and other forms, they promoted knowledge about civilized park visits. Volunteers were organized to conduct civility guidance, order maintenance, environmental cleaning, and convenient services in key park areas, providing visitors with park navigation.

Last weekend, over one million visitors visited major municipal parks. Cherry blossoms, peach blossoms, forsythia, crabapple, tulips, and peonies will bloom one after another, ushering in a spring flower viewing wave in Beijing. In the future, the Beijing Park Management Center will continue to promote the coordinated governance of “human defense + technical defense” and improve park management efficiency through digital means.

Reporters: Zhang Lu

Editor: Bai Shuang Proofreader: Yang Li