Robots help Singapore’s worker shortage
SINGAPORE: After struggling to find staff during the pandemic, businesses in Singapore are deploying robots to help carry out a range of tasks, from surveying construction sites to scanning library bookshelves.
The citystate 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 Covid19 curbs have sped up ‘‘the pace of technology adoption and automation’’.
At a Singapore construction site, a fourlegged robot called
Spot, built by US company Boston Dynamics, scans sections of mud and gravel to check on work progress, feeding data back to construction company Gammon’s control room.
Gammon’s general manager, Michael O’Connell, said using Spot required only one human employee instead of the two previously needed.
‘‘Replacing the need for manpower onsite with autonomous solutions is gaining real traction,’’ O’Connell said. He believes labour shortages made worse by the pandemic are here to stay.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s National Library has introduced two shelfreading robots that can scan labels on 100,000 books, or about 30% of its collection, per day.
Singapore has 605 robots installed per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry, the secondhighest number globally, after South Korea’s 932, according to a 2021 report by the International Federation of Robotics.
Robots are also being used for customerfacing tasks, with more than 30 metro stations set to have robots making coffee for commuters.
Keith Tan, chief executive of Crown Digital, which created the barista robot, said it was helping solve the ‘‘biggest painpoint’’ in food and beverage — finding staff — while also creating wellpaid positions to help automate the sector.
However, some people trying the service still yearned for human interaction.
‘‘We always want to have some kind of human touch,’’ commuter Ashish Kumar said, while sipping on a robotbrewed drink.