Cleaning robots powered by AI: Singapore funds tech to boost efficiency, workplace safety

SINGAPORE: An unlikely visitor roams the waterways of Sungei Seletar.

A fully autonomous robot, powered by artificial intelligence, scoops up to 50kg of trash at a time from Singapore’s rivers and canals. It is also the first project that taps the country’s superfast 5G network.

The robot, which is fully electric and can be powered by solar panels, was featured at the CleanEnviro Summit that took place from Jun 19 to 21 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre.

National Environment Agency (NEA) organises the annual summit, where it spotlights new technologies being developed for the cleaning sector and connects innovators with investors.

The waterway cleaning robot was developed by Weston Robot, a Singapore-based robotics firm that has deployed more than 300 autonomous robots across the island. These include sweepers at Gardens by the Bay and grass-cutting mowers at Jurong Lake Gardens.

“With AI, our robot can recognise there’s rubbish there, there's flotsam there. Our robot can go there and collect garbage more effectively,” said the company’s chief scientist Zhang Yanliang.

Mr Zhang told CNA that robots help to save on costs normally incurred by manual labour, and eliminate the need for people to physically clean waterways.

“Now, the operator doesn't have to sit on a boat, which might be very slippery after rain, and the working environment is much more comfortable. We can sit in the control room and supervise the robot running,” he added.

SHIFT TOWARDS FAST-EMERGING TECH

Weston Robot was among more than 40 innovators that shared and pitched solutions and showcased prototypes at the CleanEnviro Summit.

As the environmental services industry shifts towards robotics and other fast-emerging tech, NEA is funding such innovations, including a false ceiling inspection robot called Falcon – the brainchild of researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

NEA’s national robotics programme supported the research group’s development of robots to make work processes safer and more productive.

The Falcon robot eliminates the need for pest control workers to manually inspect buildings, said Associate Professor Mohan Rajesh Elara, one of the SUTD researchers.

Made to get into hard-to-access areas, it performs tasks that could be tedious or dangerous for its human counterparts.

“(By) deploying the robots, pest control personnel can simply control, operate, monitor the robot, and the robot will go into the nooks and corners of false ceilings, looking for scratch marks and rodent droppings,” Assoc Prof Mohan noted.

SUTD was also behind the development of a novel reconfigurable pavement sweeping robot named Panthera.

With the help of robots, Assoc Prof Mohan said that workers now manage and supervise, rather than pull off “ergonomically difficult work processes”.

“We have now a new class of jobs created as robot operators, where one person manages five or 10 robots in one go. And the robots take on jobs that are dull, dirty and dangerous,” he added.

“So we see a complete transformation of jobs with projects like Falcon and Panthera making a real impact.”