Today/Reuters-May 31
After struggling to find staff during the pandemic, businesses in Singapore have increasingly turned to deploying robots to help carry out a range of tasks, from surveying construction sites to scanning library bookshelves. The city-state relies on foreign workers, but their number fell by 235,700 between December 2019 and September 2021, according to the manpower ministry, which notes how Covid-19 curbs have sped up “the pace of technology adoption and automation” by companies. At a Singapore construction site, a four-legged robot called “Spot”, built by US company Boston Dynamics, scans sections of mud and gravel to check on work progress, with data fed back to construction company Gammon’s control room. A view of a book-scanning robot used by Singapore’s National Library Board, to scan and report misplaced books on April 25, 2022. Meanwhile, Singapore’s National Library has introduced two shelf-reading robots that can scan labels on 100,000 books, or about 30 per cent of its collection, per day. Singapore has 605 robots installed per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry, the second-highest number globally, after South Korea’s 932, according to a 2021 report by the International Federation of Robotics. Robots are also being used for customer-facing tasks, with more than 30 MRT stations set to have robots making coffee for commuters. However, some people trying the service still yearned for human interaction. Read more at: https://www.todayonline.com/minute/baristas-inspectors-singapores-robot-workforce-plugs-labour-gaps-1912171
