From baristas to inspectors: Singapore's robot workforce plugs labour gaps
The Hindu
Robots are also being used for customer-facing tasks, with more than 30 metro stations set to have robots making coffee for commuters.
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.
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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 U.S. 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 labour shortages made worse by the pandemic are here to stay.
Meanwhile, Singapore's National Library has introduced two shelf-reading robots that can scan labels on 100,000 books, or about 30 percent of its collection, per day.
While residents are worried over deaths due to diarrhoea in Vijayawada, officials still grapple to find the root cause. Contaminated drinking water supplied by VMC officials is the reason, insist people in the affected areas, but officials insist that efforts are on to identify the disease and that those with symptoms other than diarrhoea too are visiting the health camps.