The win is in tandem with Singapore's push to take the robotics industry to the next level.
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Front row (L-R): Tan Zhi Jie (RVHS); Kenneth Lim (Singapore Polytechnic, mentor); RoseMary Tan (JYPS); Kelly Chong (JYPS); Saw Ying Ying (SCGS); Michelle Tee (SCGS); Sylvia Lam (RVHS); Christopher Goh (JYPS, front); Lai Jun Kang (RVHS, behind Christopher); and Ng Gek Yang (JYPS).
Back row (L-R): Sarah Shum (SCGS); Joanne Chua (SCGS); and Kang Ghee Keong, Managing Director, Elpmis International (the team's sponsor to the US).
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"I never thought we would win," says a surprised Michelle Tee, in an interview with The Straits Times. "The other countries were very good and it was our first time."
Tee was part of a Singaporean team that won the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Lego League (FLL) 2008 in Atlanta. The 12-member team, comprising students from Singapore Chinese Girls' School (SCGS), River Valley High (RVH), and Juying Primary School (JYPS) made waves in April this year when it topped 81 other teams to become the first non-North American champions in the competition's 10-year history. FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to develop ways to inspire students in engineering and technology fields, chiefly through robotics competitions.
Singapore's win at FLL 2008 comes at a time when the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) has just embarked upon its second initiative to grow the Robotics and Intelligent Systems (R&IS) industry. In 1988, foreseeing the transformative power of robotics, EDB launched the National Automation Masterplan.
By 1991, the scheme helped establish Singapore as second only to Japan in the use of industrial robots, which helped to create research institutions such as the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) and local competitions such as the Singapore Robotics Games. Singapore's expertise in robotics and industrial automation helped anchor companies such as Seagate, with its hard disk drive manufacturing operations, and Yokogawa, with its global engineering solutions centre.
Robotics & Intelligent Systems - The Second Wave Of Growth
Today, with better processing power and more intelligent algorithms, robotics and other intelligent systems are poised for a second wave of growth. Already, German industrial robotics giant Kuka is developing novel technologies to allow humans and robots to work closer, more efficiently and safely in work cell environments. The Da Vinci Surgical System, manufactured by Intuitive Surgical, utilises keyhole surgery that reduces blood loss, complications, and scarring as compared to open cut surgery. In the financial sector, automatic trading algorithms drive almost a third of all stock trades in the United States. iRobot’s Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner has sold more than 2.5 million units since its launch in 2002, and some studies estimate that personal robots now outnumber industrial robots three to one.
Colin Angle, CEO, iRobot, predicted at RoboBusiness 2008 that while R&IS technologies will play a part in the augmentation and replacement of all forms of human labour, the greatest growth areas will come from two types of applications - those that are revenue generating, like entertainment robots, and those that humans cannot perform, like the inspection of hazardous environments.
"If you are looking for robots, you might miss the robotic revolution," says Professor Matthew Mason, Director, Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in a recent interview with TechNewsWorld. Robotics technologies, even if unseen, are already having a significant impact. For example, computer vision technologies have applications in red-eye reduction, traffic monitoring, and image database searching.
It has also been predicted that R&IS technologies will be used to tackle increasingly more challenging problems.
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"Singapore's interest in Robotics and Intelligent Systems is as much to find the solutions to our own challenges as well as to serve the world's needs."
– Jonathan Kua, Director, New Business Group, EDB
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"If you look at many problems facing the world today, like rapid urbanisation, security and ageing," explains Jonathan Kua, Director, New Business Group, EDB, "You can see that their solutions will inevitably involve some form of intelligent technologies, be it heuristic, self-aware cities; smart, adaptable security systems; or assisted-living technologies. Singapore's interest in Robotics and Intelligent Systems is as much to find the solutions to our own challenges as well as to serve the world's needs. Indeed, Singapore's ability to pull in global talent and its geographical location mean that it is a great base for companies hoping to develop new applications and to tap on new markets."
Enhancing Singapore's R&IS Capability
Singapore has more than 20 R&IS-related research groups, including the Robotics Research Centre and Intelligent Systems Centre at Nanyang Technologial University, the Social Robotics Lab and the Interactive Intelligence Lab at the National University of Singapore, the Advanced Robotics & Intelligent Control Centre at Singapore Polytechnic, and the Institute for Infocomm Research under the Agency for Science and Technology Research.
In addition to encouraging foreign investments in R&IS, EDB is exploring efforts to forge closer ties between the research community and the industry, as well as increasing the efficiency of technology translation efforts to commercialise research assets.
Like the Singapore team at this year's FLL, Singapore is set to make a splash in the field of Robotics and Intelligent Systems.
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