Singapore’s Friendly Bots

Robots can clean homes and cook, but can they be used to keep a full city clean? The city nation of Singapore is about to demonstrate how. Called “Friendly Bots” because they can speak in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, they also speak the local lingo of Singlish, which incorporates many words into English from these other languages. You can actually have a limited conversation with them.

The friendly bots are currently being used to clean out the hotels, shopping malls and government buildings in Singapore. There are four bots in operation at present and by next March the locals hope to have almost 300 bots working around the city state. They can scrub, mop, vacuum, and sweep autonomously. This will eventually free up many cleaning jobs that humans are currently performing.

In addition they can rap in English and entertain people close by. These hi tech cleaning bots have oval shaped heads with red lights to resemble the humanoid face. They also have wheels that allow them to roll around where they are required. This is one science project that’s making a sweeping statement across the city right now.