New IMDA initiative to help 500 enterprises adopt autonomous robots over next three years

They can get help from industry players that can offer tech expertise, assist with projects

- Lee Li Ying

Imagine enjoying a cappuccino from a nearby coffee joint delivered right to your office on the fifth storey by a delivery robot.

That robot would have to navigate a path outdoors, avoid obstacles such as pedestrians or ramps, navigate to the correct building, communicate with lift systems to go to the selected floor, and then locate the right unit for delivery.

“That’s not a trivial task for a robot to do because there is no set pathway to guide the robot,” said Mr Johnson Poh, assistant chief executive of enterprise transformation and innovation group at the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).

While autonomous mobile robots are already being deployed in Singapore, the authority is looking to scale both the number of such robots and the complexity of their use cases over the next few years.

IMDA envisions a future where these robots can take over mundane tasks, so businesses can achieve significant productivity gains.

But to achieve that goal in Singapore’s dense urban environment with multi-storey buildings, robots must be able to integrate and interoperate seamlessly with lifts, doors, building systems and other robots.

As part of the push, IMDA is rolling out a new initiative to get 500 digitally mature enterprises to adopt autonomous robots in their operations over the next three years, with more focus on the manufacturing, logistics, hospitality and food services sectors.

The Autonomous Mobile Robot x Digital Leaders initiative was announced at a media briefing on Nov 20 at IMDA PIXEL.