SINGAPORE: Over the next five years, at least 10,000 students in Singapore will be trained to work with “physical AI”, where intelligence is no longer confined to computer screens but embedded directly into robots, drones and autonomous machines.
The initiative, supported by the National Robotics Programme (NRP), will span from primary schools to universities.
Through hackathons and industry projects, students will move beyond basic coding to solve real-world problems.
ROBOTS WITH “COMMON SENSE”
While traditional robots follow pre-set rules, the next generation of machines will need to sense, decide and act independently, industry players say.
Associate Professor Mohan Rajesh Elara, co-founder of Singapore-based cleaning robot firm LionsBot, said the current limitation of robots is a lack of situational awareness.
“The robots of today are driven by the codes that (a) programmer wrote … definitive rules that enable the robot to complete a task.”
“But a robot of today, if (it’s) doing the job and if a fainted person is on the floor, the robot often will take this person for an obstacle. The idea is, how can we empower robots with common sense to interpret this scenario?” Prof Mohan added.