After struggling to find staff during the pandemic, businesses in Singapore have increasingly turned to deploy robots to help carry out a range of tasks, from surveying construction sites to scanning library bookshelves.
The city-state relies on foreign workers,but their number fell by 235,700 between December 2019 and September 2021, according to the manpower ministry, which notes how COVID-19 curbs have sped up “the pace of technology adoption and automation" by companies

Robots are also being used for customer-facing tasks, with more than 30 metro stations set to have robots making coffee for commuters.
Keith Tan,chief executive of Crown Digitalwhich created the barista robot, said it was helping solve the “biggest pain-point” in food and beverage - finding staff -while also creating well-paid positions to help automate the sector.
However, some people trying the service still yearned for human interaction. “We always want to have some kind of human touch," said commuter Ashish Kumar, while sipping on a robot-brewed drink.