by sportswriters Yue Wenwan and Gao Meng
MILAN, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- After lunch, French ice hockey player Anae Simon placed a pin from her national team into an orange capsule and waited for a robotic arm to drop it into a transparent ball pit in the Milano Olympic and Paralympic Village.
Then she leaned toward a touch screen and spoke a simple instruction in her native language: "Help me grab a blue one."
Seconds later, the robotic arm, guided by artificial intelligence, reached into the pit, selected a blue plastic capsule and placed it gently on the counter.
Inside was a pizza-shaped pin inscribed with "pizza club" and "eat more." "This is a new one, I've never seen it. It's so adorable," Simon said with a smile. "With this technology, exchanging pins here is like opening a mystery box."
The moment captures why a small booth tucked inside the athlete village has become an unexpected attraction.
Powered by Chinese technology from Alibaba Cloud, the smart pin exchange station is turning a decades-old Olympic tradition into a playful, tech-driven experience, drawing athletes from around the world.
Pin trading has long been part of Olympic culture, a way for competitors and staff to connect across sports and borders. At the Milano-Cortina Games, that ritual comes with a digital twist. Participants place one of their own pins into a capsule, then let an AI-driven robotic arm randomly select another.
The station is driven by Alibaba Cloud's large language model, known as Qwen, which allows users to give voice instructions in Chinese, English, French and Italian.
For many athletes, the novelty lies not just in the technology, but in how it blends into the social rhythm of the village.
Italian medical staff member Daniela Artesani said she visits the booth nearly every day.
"Everyone is curious about it," she said. "Each capsule feels like a small gift from someone you don't know. And it doesn't replace the traditional face-to-face exchange. It just makes it more playful."
The athlete village in Milan officially opened on Jan. 30, with around 1,500 people living inside. The Olympic atmosphere is already thick; flags line the buildings, fluttering in the winter air.
Around the intelligent pin exchange station, collectors have deposited pins with their own histories: emblems from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, mascots from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and badges from the Paris 2024 Games. Each capsule tells a different story, even before it is opened.
According to Tai Le, an on-site Alibaba Cloud staff member, more than 1,300 people have tried the station in its first five days of operation.
Yet even as technology draws crowds, the original spirit of pin trading remains visible throughout the village.
In the dining hall, Chinese speed skater Yang Binyu unclipped a Chinese team pin featuring a panda and the Milano-Cortina mascot Tina to exchange with others.
"Besides the races, this is what I'm most excited about — trading pins and making friends at the Winter Olympics," she said. ■
