The seven major subway stations on the Beijing Capital Airport Line and Daxing Airport Line have all recently been equipped with voice-operated ticket machines. Now, commuters wanting to travel from the airport to downtown Beijing will be able to buy tickets simply by "saying a word" in front of one of the new machines thanks to voice-responsive AI.

Relying on the most cutting-edge intelligent voice ticketing technology, as long as the passenger states a vague destination to the ticket vending machine, the AI can automatically determine the nearest subway station and quickly determine the optimal route. With the new machines, the average time needed for a passenger to select a station has dropped from 15 seconds to 1.6 seconds, greatly improving the ticket purchase experience.

"Many elderly and foreign passengers who arrive in Beijing for the first time do not know the corresponding subway station closest to their destination, or are not very good at using apps to check stations," explained a staff member for the Capital Airport Line. "It often takes them quite a long time to ask directions and pay for tickets. Now all you need to do is say 'I'm going to Sanlitun,' or 'I'm going to Guijie,' and a ticket can be purchased in just a few seconds." For the convenience of passengers, the machine supports cash and Alipay.

Wu Nan, the architect of the Speech Lab portion of the Alibaba DAMO Academy, describes how the machine's latest voice technology is built using highly integrated computing modules and a new generation of audio-video fusion algorithms. These systems can not only achieve accurate voice recognition in noisy environments above 90 decibels but also recognize voices faster and more accurately.

The new generation of voice-operated ticketing systems is jointly deployed by Ant Financial, Alibaba DAMO Academy, AMAP, and Beijing Ruubypay Science and Technology Co., Ltd. In the future, it is expected to be applied to more stations in Beijing.

(Note: Content source is from china.org.cn.)