An attractive female robot used as a tour guide for a Chinese art expo has been taken out of action after being groped by over-zealous tourists.

The robot was introduced to offer tour guides for visitors to the Jinzhou world garden art expo in Jinzhou, Liaoning province, northeast China.

But it proved too fascinating for many visitors who wanted to take a closer look at the robot which has bright red lips and wears a blue silk blue ballgown.

Expo spokesman Feng Kung said: ‘The event is a big occasion and we get lots of visitors, and it is a lot of stress for the guides, so we came up with the idea of using a robot.
‘But we designed it as an attractive female robot, and it seems more people are interested in grabbing the robot to have a snap made, or even fondling the dress to see what is underneath.

‘As a result of the interference the robot keeps breaking down, and we have to put the human guides back into place.

‘It is broken again  now for example, we think next year we will use a man or a more robot looking robot.

Introduced in the summer the robot was designed to last until the event ends in October.