Robots fill gaps in Singapore’s labor shortage

After struggling to find employees during the pandemic, companies in Singapore have increasingly turned to deploying robots in a range of tasks, from building construction sites to digitizing library shelves.

The city-state relies on foreign workers, but the flow dropped by 235,700 between December 2019 and September 2021, according to the Ministry of Labour, which notes that Covid-19 restrictions have accelerated “the pace of automation adoption”. by the companies.

At a construction site in Singapore, a four-legged robot called “Spot” from US company Boston Dynamics scans sections of the development to check the progress of work, with data sent back to the control room at construction company Gammon.

Gammon’s general manager, Michael O’Connell, said that with Spot, the company only needs one human employee instead of the two previously needed to do the verification work.

Meanwhile, the National Library of Singapore has introduced two shelf-reading robots that can scan tags on 100,000 books, or about 30% of its collection, a day.

Singapore has 605 robots for every 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 up to have machines making coffee for passengers.

Keith Tan, chief executive of Crown Digital, which created the barista robot, said the company is helping to solve the “biggest pain point” in the food and beverage industry – finding employees – while creating high-paying jobs for help automate the industry.

However, some people who have tried the service said they prefer human interaction. “We always want to have some kind of human touch,” said Ashish Kumar as he sipped a coffee brewed by the robots.