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From Baristas to Inspectors: Singapore’s Robot Workforce Plugs Labor Gaps

A view of a cleaning robot used by LHN group, which runs the Coliwoo hotel chain, inside a hotel in Singapore, April 22, 2022. Picture taken April 22, 2022. (Reuters)
A view of a cleaning robot used by LHN group, which runs the Coliwoo hotel chain, inside a hotel in Singapore, April 22, 2022. Picture taken April 22, 2022. (Reuters)
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From Baristas to Inspectors: Singapore’s Robot Workforce Plugs Labor Gaps

A view of a cleaning robot used by LHN group, which runs the Coliwoo hotel chain, inside a hotel in Singapore, April 22, 2022. Picture taken April 22, 2022. (Reuters)
A view of a cleaning robot used by LHN group, which runs the Coliwoo hotel chain, inside a hotel in Singapore, April 22, 2022. Picture taken April 22, 2022. (Reuters)

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.

Gammon's general manager, Michael O'Connell, said using Spot required only one human employee instead of the two previously needed to do the job manually.

"Replacing the need for manpower on-site with autonomous solutions is gaining real traction," said O'Connell, who believes industry labor shortages made worse by the pandemic are here to stay.

Meanwhile, Singapore's National Library Board has introduced two shelf-reading robots at one of its public libraries that can scan labels on 100,000 books, or about 30 percent of its collection, per day.

"Staff need not read the call numbers one by one on the shelf, and this reduces the routine and labor-intensive aspects," said Lee Yee Fuang, assistant director at the National Library Board.

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 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 pain-point" in food and beverage - finding staff - while also creating well-paid 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," said commuter Ashish Kumar, while sipping on a robot-brewed drink.

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Technology

PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
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PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP

Japanese electronics giant Sony is set to celebrate 30 years since it launched the PlayStation console, the little grey box that catapulted the firm into the gaming big league.
PlayStation was Sony's first foray into the world of video games and when it hit the shelves in Japan on December 3, 1994, the company needed to sell one million units to cover its costs, AFP said.
In the end, the gadget became a legend, selling more than 102 million units, helping to launch many of the industry's best-loved franchises and positioning Sony as a heavyweight in a hugely lucrative sector.
"PlayStation changed the history of video games," said Hiroyuki Maeda, a Japanese specialist in video game history.
"It truly transformed everything: hardware, software, distribution and marketing."
One of the keys to its success was broadening the appeal of a pastime that had often been dismissed as a hobby for children.
From the off, the firm was clear that it wanted to trash this image.
In part this stems from Sony's rivalry with Nintendo, which was already a dominant player in the sector by the mid-1990s, but whose games skewed young.
Sony 'humiliated'
The original PlayStation can trace its history to a falling out between the two great Japanese firms.
They had partnered in the late 1980s to develop a version of the Super Nintendo console with an in-built CD player.
But Nintendo suspected Sony were using the project as a way to muscle into the gaming sector and abruptly cancelled the partnership in 1991.
"Sony found itself in a humiliating position," said Maeda, so pushed ahead with the project by itself.
The hardware proved to be revolutionary, CD-ROMs being cheaper and storing much more data than the cartridges used by Nintendo and other consoles.
And to further distinguish itself from Nintendo, Sony courted a young adult audience with fighting games like "Tekken", out-and-out horror with "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill", and military titles like "Metal Gear Solid".
Its advertising also followed a more grown-up path.
Hollywood auteur David Lynch was drafted in to direct ads for the PS2 launched in 2000 -- conjuring a nightmare vision of floating heads and talking ducks certainly not meant for younger audiences.
"The older audience obviously had better purchasing power than children," said Philippe Dubois, founder of M05, a French association that aims to preserve digital heritage.
The PS2 is still the most successful console in history, having sold more than 160 million units.
'New sensations'
Over the past 30 years, the competition has intensified and the technology has been honed.
While Sega and other rivals have fallen by the wayside, Microsoft has entered the fray with its Xbox, and Nintendo is still on the scene with its Switch console.
But the industry is enduring tough times.
A surge in popularity and investment during the pandemic has subsided and Sony's PlayStation division recently laid off hundreds of workers.
Plenty of analysts are also predicting that cloud gaming will soon render consoles obsolete.
Sony appears undaunted though, recently launching an upgraded version of its PS5 with a marketing push that highlighted new AI features.
Bloomberg has reported that the Japanese firm is also planning a new hand-held version of the PlayStation, which would once again pit it against old rival Nintendo, undisputed king of portable devices.
However, for the purists, few innovations were as great as the original console's ability to handle 3D graphics.
The technology was instrumental for the appeal of classic games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Final Fantasy VII".
"We discovered sensations, emotions that we hadn't experienced with earlier consoles," said French YouTuber and PlayStation enthusiast Cyril 2.0.
He said he had collected almost every title released for the PlayStation in Europe -- some 1,400 -- and insisted the formula for success was not complicated.
"For consoles, games are still the most important thing," he said.