Embracing robotics beyond the factory floor

I HAVE been fascinated by the sci-fi genre since I was young. While many ideas such as time machines remain out of reach, others, such as robots, have become much more mainstream. Singapore is now the second-most automated country in the world, behind South Korea. Our lion state has some 605 robots installed per 10,000 human employees, according to the International Federation of Robots. The number is far ahead of the global average of 126 industrial robots per 10,000 employees, and steadily increasing.

Most of these “robot workers” in Singapore are found in the high-tech manufacturing sector, where large-scale process automation has been commonplace since the early 2000s – a necessary evolution given the significant decline in our manufacturing labour force. The automation of Singapore’s production lines was made possible by economic incentives and investments to create a strong education and research ecosystem. According to EduRank, both the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University are ranked among the top 10 in Asia (and top 30 in the world) for robotics. All this wouldn’t be possible without strategic support from the government in line with its Smart Nation ambitions.

Singapore has set its sights on becoming a world-class, tech-driven city-state. It is transforming itself to become a Smart Nation, harnessing technology to transform how its people and businesses live, work and play. So why are we not seeing more robots outside of factory floors?