New IMDA Initiative To Help 500 Companies Adopt Autonomous Robots In Next Three Years

SINGAPORE – 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.