IMDA to help 500 businesses embrace autonomous robots and boost productivity

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.

The initiative will see local enterprises paired with experienced industry players that can offer tech expertise and help scope and implement projects.

In a study conducted by IMDA between December 2024 and June 2025, with about 50 companies across the four sectors of built environment, manufacturing, logistics, and hotels and food services, 80 per cent of enterprises saw autonomous robots as a potential solution to address manpower inefficiencies.

But 65 per cent of enterprises were uncertain about which autonomous robots would best fit their operations, and 60 per cent of them did not know how to start implementing the robots.

Such enterprises can now tap four partners – Singapore Polytechnic, Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic, local robotics company dConstruct Robotics, and real estate firm CapitaLand’s The Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab.

These partners will equip enterprises with knowledge and skills through workshops with hands-on consultation and access to technical expertise.

There will also be practical demonstrations to help them understand the capabilities that robots have, and personalised guidance to address their specific operational challenges.

IMDA will co-fund 50 per cent of integration and interoperability aspects of autonomous mobile robot projects, as well as efforts to build in-house robotic capabilities to support investment in such projects.

Mr Takeshi Ando, managing director of Panasonic’s research and development centre in Singapore, said interoperability is the biggest challenge companies face in deploying autonomous robots in the island’s high-rise environment.

In a setting such as an office building, robots would have to communicate with lifts and access systems provided by different vendors.

If different types of robots are deployed for different purposes, such as cleaning and surveillance, the robots would also have to de-conflict their paths and actions, so they do not clash or hinder one another’s work.

Panasonic will be able to provide companies with access to its artificial intelligence platform, which allows for integration of different types of facilities management as well as robots.

“In the future, autonomous mobile robots will become the infrastructure of a district. That means they don’t operate independently and have to connect with many, many devices and systems,” Mr Ando said.

Another feature of the new initiative is the deployment of quick-win projects, which have proven return on investment and can be rolled out fast in six to eight months on average.

One such example is a six-month project where enterprises can deploy pre-approved lift integration solutions that can help robots move across different floors. Through this project, IMDA will also study the market demand for such solutions and their potential to scale.

Enterprises tapping the new initiative will also get access to a self-help guide that contains real-world insights on successful deployments and covers areas such as technology assessment, operational redesign and talent development.

Agriculture firm Greenphyto has seen the benefits of autonomous forklift robots in its vertical farm.

In the past, workers had to manually transport up to 100 planting boards weighing 50kg in total from level four to level one.

Mr Chong Kok Leong, a software engineer at Greenphyto, said: “If workers consistently do this every day, it takes a toll on their bodies.”

But since the firm’s software engineers integrated its forklift robots with its lift system, the same task now takes just three minutes while enhancing workplace safety.

Note: This article was written by Lee Li Ying and first appeared in The Straits Times on 20 November 2025.

Source: The Straits Times