The first community canteen powered by artificial intelligence in Shanghai held its soft opening on July 19.

Located in the city's Hongqiao sub-district, the canteen features robotic arms that perform the bulk of food preparation tasks.

The meat dishes here costs 8 yuan ($1.24) while vegetable dishes cost only 3.5 yuan.

"The dishes here are abundant in choice and they taste nice," said \r\nGuan Shuang, a resident from the Hongqiao community. "The transparent \r\nglass allows me to view the whole cooking procedure. It's quite \r\nsanitary."

The canteen accepts a variety of payment options, including bank \r\ncard, QR codes and the digital yuan, also known as e-CNY or Digital \r\nCurrency Electronic Payment.

There are six sections in the canteen: a self-service area, an \r\nunmanned wheaten food area, a self-checkout area, an online order \r\npick-up zone, a data center and a smart snack machine.

At the self-service area, diners simply need to place their dishes on\r\n a smart cashier desk and the system will automatically determine the \r\ncost of the meal.

The smart snack machine, which is available round the clock, offers \r\ndishes such as tomato beef brisket noodles, pork noodles with pickled \r\nvegetables, and tom yam seafood noodles.

Liu Yunxi, founder of Shanghai Xixiang Catering Management \r\nCooperation, the company that built the canteen, said that such \r\nfacilities can "better energize the food industry", while the Hongqiao \r\nsub-district management office said that the AI canteen can add more \r\nconvenience to residents' lives.