Xian'er the Robot Monk

I can give up and go home, Robo Monk is here..........................

Longquan (Dragon Spring) Temple in Beijing has a new Buddhist monk called Xian'er. He's a robot that stands about 50cm and is dressed in a yellow robe. The AI-enabled robot is able to sense his surroundings and engage in basic Q&A - based discussions about Buddhism.

The temple publishes its own cartoon series called Trouble, You Seek for Yourself that dispenses little nuggets of Buddhist wisdom in a way that laypeople can easily understand and the well fed-looking robot is modelled on its chief protagonist.

He even has his own account on Sina Weibo, the leading microblogging service in China.

Master Xuecheng, the abbot of Longquan Temple has founded a website in Chinese, English and Japanese, a personal blog, a personal microblog, a blog and microblog for the temple and a charity foundation blog as well as maintaining a personal Twitter account in English and instant messaging groups and microblogs on sina.com and QQ.com in eight different languages.