Singapore robots patrol against “anti-social behavior.”

Euronews.com reports on a new use for robots, to enforce social mores and good citizenship. Citizens seem less than pleased with the artificial politeness police, however:

Called “Xavier,” the robots are equipped with seven cameras that enable them to detect “undesirable social behaviour,” for instance if you incorrectly park your bike, if you smoke in an unauthorised area or if social distancing is not being respected.

According to project manager Michael Lim, these machines are a new weapon against insecurity.

“If the robot is around and something happens, the people in the control room will have a trace and will be able to see what happened”, he said.

The robots initially patrolled a housing estate and a shopping centre as part of a 3-week trial in September.

The island of 5.5 million inhabitants has seen an arsenal of surveillance technology installed in the streets across the tightly controlled city-state.

It already has some 90,000 police cameras – a number set to double by 2030 – in place and appears to be on the lookout for the newest technologies, such as facial recognition devices installed on lampposts, to help authorities pick out faces in a crowd.

Digital rights activist Lee Yi Ting said the devices are the latest way Singaporeans are being watched.

“It all contributes to the sense people… need to watch what they say and what they do in Singapore to a far greater extent than they would in other countries,” she said.

“It’s (the robot) dystopian because of the extent to which we are visibly surveilled. But I think that what’s more dystopian for me is that it is normalised and that people are not responding much to this at all”.


There’s video of Xavier on patrol at the link. It’s exactly what you’d think – a panopticon on wheels.