How Singapore hopes to become a world robotics leader

The world was in the thick of a pandemic when Kelvin Wee, CEO of Taiwan-listed Patec Precision Industry, received an enquiry from security organization Certis Cisco.

Certis was trying to build a security robot, but things were not working out with its vendors. They struggled to find the sweet spot where performance, reliability, and pricing met. Could Patec help?

The opportunity was intriguing for Wee, who spent most of his life working for the Singapore-based precision engineering company founded by his father. Building robots was not in the ordinary course of business, but Certis’ interest in deploying the technology gave him an inkling that this industry might eventually be critical.

Wee turned out to be right. In the years since, Singapore’s blue-collar workforce has suffered from more personnel shortages and rising labor costs.

Companies are turning to automation. Certis now offers its clients smart security services, including those delivered by two robots designed by Patec’s spin-off company Kabam Robotics. These patrolling robots can detect incidents and feed information back to a virtual platform called the Smart Command Operations Centre.

To build them, Wee sought the help of an old friend working on software development. Together, the team did a series of demos that impressed Certis stakeholders and the board. In December 2020, Certis awarded Patec a purchase order for 45 robots worth about S$4 million (US$2.9 million).

“That was the day we realized that there was probably a business in this,” Wee said. Kabam Robotics was founded shortly after. In 2022, it merged with Cognicept Systems, the startup built by Michael Sayre, Wee’s software business partner.

For decades, the rise of automation has favored industrial robots, commonly found on the factory floor. These robots operate in an environment where conditions are fixed and controlled.

Service robots, on the other hand, are found in free environments with variable conditions and human behavior. A cleaning robot, for example, must know how to navigate through changing crowd conditions in a shopping mall.

The variability makes it tricky to build a robot that is always effective. But developments in technology, such as sensors and vision systems, have helped these machines adapt better to human environments.

Singapore excels at industrial automation, but needs to carve a niche for itself in the field of service robotics.

The country had the second-highest industrial robot density in the world in 2022, research from the International Federation of Robotics shows. It had 730 robots for every 10,000 employees, largely deployed in the manufacturing sector.

But now, Singapore wants to shape the next wave of service robots that augment humans’ work.

National dream

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