Baristas and librarians: Singapore’s robot pick up slack amid labour crunch

Singapore's Ministry of Manpower told Reuters that "some industries were experiencing personnel shortages due to Covid-related restrictions on the inflow of foreign manpower". From December 2019 to September 2021, it said non-resident employment declined by 235,700 for the country of around 5.6 million people.

Singapore is highly reliant on the foreign workforce to staff many jobs, especially in the services, hospitality and construction industries, and the ministry said Covid-19 has "accelerated the pace of technology adoption and automation" by businesses to meet this manpower shortage.

At a construction site on the holiday island of Sentosa, robot dog “Spot” -- built by Boston Dynamics – was prodding its way through mud and gravel until it came to a stop. It then began running a scan to check on the progress of the construction, with the report being fed back live to construction firm Gammon’s control room.

“There is (a labour shortage), especially during the Covid period we felt that," said Gammon’s General Manager Michael O’Connell. “I think things have still not got back to pre-Covid, and I don't think they ever will, so replacing the need for manpower on-site with an autonomous solution is gaining real traction in the industry."

O’Connell added that the company can now afford to only send one employee to monitor and deploy the robot, instead of sending two workers previously to do the same scans manually. The construction sector employs some 300,000 foreign workers and struggled during the pandemic as many migrant workers were unable to enter the country.

Over at the National Library in Singapore, “Eeebot” rolls along scanning the shelves for misplaced books. It is one of two such shelf-reading robots that can scan 100,000 items, or about 30 per cent of the library’s entire collection, per day, every day. The robots generate a list with specific locations, which helps to cut down time spent by the librarians manually eyeing the shelves, said an assistant director at National Library Board, Lee Yee Fuang.

“Staff need not read the call numbers one by one on the shelf, and this reduces the routine and labour-intensive aspects of this task, which is not sustainable to cope with the escalating manpower cost," she said.

The Singapore government has been encouraging automation and robotics in the workplace, amid an ageing population and tight foreign worker manpower policies, creating a multi-agency National Robotics Programme in 2014 which aims to develop robotics enablers and solutions in the country.

Hotelier and estate company LHN Group, which manages over 40 properties, has invested about S$100,000 ($72,295) in robots and more than S$50,000 in smart sensor systems and software in the past two years.

It has two cleaning robots and one mosquito-control robot -- on a trial basis – that are deployed across its properties, including its Coliwoo hotel.

“During the pandemic where borders are closed, it is harder to get workers, and therefore because we (are) already used to use robots, it does help us to save on manpower,” said the group managing director of LHN Group, Kelvin Lim. He added that the robots are designed to work alongside regular workers and take up some of the more menial tasks, rather than completely replace their work.

Singapore has one of the highest robot densities in the workplace, according to the 2021 World Robot Statistics report by the International Federation of Robotics. The tech-savvy nation has 605 robots installed per 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry, the second-highest after South Korea’s 932. Japan, Germany and Sweden round up the top five in the world.

The growth in robotics is also leading companies to employ a higher-value workforce.

"We are solving a universal problem within F&B. Not just in Singapore or Japan, but around the world and automation will come in to assist us. So you know, this is the biggest pain point for all F&B operators,” said Keith Tan, CEO of Crown Digital, which created a barista robot that serves commuters lattes and cappuccinos daily, without any human operators.

The robot, which will be rolled out to 30 more metro stations across Singapore, is powered by software which allows customers to order through an app or via a kiosk.

“We are hiring a much more highly paid workforce to automate this industry," added Tan.

Still, some yearn for more human interaction amid the increase in automation and robotics in the services industry.

"We always want to have some kind of human touch for everything, and the food is the very important part. So whenever we order food, we (would like to) interact with a person (instead of a robot)," said commuter Ashish Kumar, while sipping on a robot-brewed beverage.