Singapore: Media Tech Fusion

AV Magazine

The city-state of Singapore continues to punch above its weight with a top-down nationwide plan to make its citizens the digital capital of the Asia region.

http://www.avinteractive.com/features/media-tech-fusion-30-01-2017/

With its skyscraper hanging gardens, terraformed tropical landscape and zoned business and living districts, such as Fusionopolis, Singapore already appears a futurist’s dream. The republic is not, however, content to rest on its hard won status as a hub for East West trade but with land and manpower at a premium is ambitious to transform the economy of its five million citizens into a digital superpower.
“The future is about convergence, digital disruption and transformation which will fundamentally change the way we work, live and operate – not just as an individual but as a people and in business,” says Gabriel Lim, chief executive of Singapore government agency, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). “We see that as a very important shift in our external environment.”
He explains that since Singapore’s independence from Malaysia in 1965 the country has managed successive plans for economic transformation. “We were a sea and air hub for physical trade, then we moved up the value chain to be a base for service industries. The next step is seizing the opportunities in a digital future.”
It is doing this with a top to bottom strategy that is likely only possible from a de facto, one-party state which has a commanding grip on all areas of society (though technically democratic, Singapore’s power is wielded by the People’s Action Party). All roads come back to the government and, where digital initiatives are concerned, this means the IMDA – the result of last October’s merger of agencies handling media/software and telecoms/data (or ‘infocomm’).
The Singaporean state operates like a corporate enterprise and any business thinking of setting up shop here will soon realise that partnership with it is pretty much essential to tap talent, funding, tax incentives and public/private schemes.
“Our strengths, as opposed to neighbours like Thailand and Malaysia, are that we are an inherently connected society,” claims Lim. “Not just in infrastructure, but culturally too we are tech savvy. We have a civil service that understands the role of technology in improving lives. We have a single layer of bureaucracy so that if a company wants to start a small pilot or ramp a massive R&D centre they won’t find layers of municipal and regional authority.”
Singapore has identified education as key to its ability to compete against far larger regional economies like China, or the equally effervescent markets of South Korea, Indonesia, even Myanmar. Specifically, it is introducing robotics into the classroom.
These include Bee-bot, designed by UK firm TTS, and the MIT-created KIBO, both tech toys which teach preschoolers about sequencing, assembly and problem solving. A more advanced S$15,000 (€10,000) robot called Nao familiarises older children with AI.
“Most of what we know as adults about robotics comes from Hollywood and can be intimidating, so Nao is a revelation to adults too,” says Adrian Lim, IDMA’s education director.

Coding and computation
The initiative continues at primary and secondary level where coding and computation is part of the curriculum. A number of school buses have been retrofitted as mobile tech labs to reach outlying districts or institutions which can’t afford permanent investment. On board, pupils can experiment with wearables, learn to programme drones, and go hands-on with scanners and 3D fabrication with laser cutters.
This is part of a wider effort to expose every Singaporean to digital technology. “Many older folk still do not know how to use smartphones so we need to introduce technology to them in ways that they can understand,” explains Goh Augustine, manager of IMDA’s next generation infrastructure.
A pilot smart bus shelter, for example, features two 46in ruggedised Samsung touch screens serving content such as updated transport schedules, weather, news and a feedback page for users to note their reaction to the unit. E-books can be downloaded and there are smartphone charge points. It’s the type of scheme that can only be enacted in a culture of high civic pride and higher CCTV surveillance.
For those in employment the government is pumping S$120m (€78m) over three years into a scheme to re-skill sections of its workforce in digital essentials. It also wants to reduce the dependence on 230,000 manual jobs in security and cleaning and 110,000 jobs in landscaping with replacement automated systems. Such jobs are either hard to fill or largely employ immigrant labour.
To do this there are 30 pilot smart tech schemes, the most successful of which will be scaled nationwide. These include facial indexing for use in future investigations, robot-as-a-service cleaners for hotels and offices designed by V3 Teletech, and a scheme to fly drones over buildings for early detection of structural damage managed by Aerolion.
“Many countries are grappling with the digital divide but we want digital inclusion and that means the vulnerable and elderly,” stressed Gabriel Lim.
Since 2014, 6,000 of the poorest households have been provided with tablets, PCs and home broadband at a subsidised cost of S$6 (€3.9) a month, plus guidance on how to use them.
Neighbourhood self-help kiosks and mobile health stations are being installed for vital signs monitoring to cope with an ageing populace and reduce the burden on the health system. By 2030 the number of Singaporeans aged 65+ will triple to 900,000. A related scheme will introduce sensors into homes to enable telemedicine.
Another e-health scheme could see virtual reality used for surgical training and remote diagnosis. Side Effects, a Toronto-HQ’d software developer better known for film/TV visual effects package Houdini, is working with the medical department to create VR scenarios. It has its Asian base in Singapore.

VR customised
Another instance of the fusion of media with technology to solve a government posed problem could see VR customised for use in the classroom. Local production company Beach House Pictures is developing software in tandem with the education department to enable multiple users to experience the same interactive content at the same time. Subjects will be based around Singaporean and worldwide cultural and historical sites and already include a VR sim of the aftermath of the 2015 Nepali earthquake.
IMDA has established labs for companies and the public to access tools and equipment and workshops to prototype new ideas. Tech labs, such as the one at Jurong library, contain 3D printers, drones and Arduino open source microcontroller kits with further facilities dedicated to video production and games just opened.
One beneficiary is Gray Tan a local business student who used the labs to develop a prosumer camera for astronomy. His company TinyMos aims to commercialise the product by mid-2017.
While the labs are primarily intended to cultivate Singaporean tech entrepreneurs, the fusion of local talent with international innovation is critical to the government’s plan to export the republic’s intellectual property far beyond its tight borders.
“Asian businesses use Singapore as a test bed to enter markets in Europe or the US and, conversely, western start-ups can gain validation here,” says Lim. “If it works in Singapore it can be scaled and exported to other parts of Asia.”
Singapore already leads Southeast Asia in both smartphone penetration (exceeding 100 per cent) and mobile broadband subscriptions (140 per cent), according to Ericsson but Singtel, the main telecoms provider, aims to boost connectivity further. HetNet is its solution to managing capacity by handing over voice and data connections from its network to the country’s 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots (targeting 20,000 by 2018). This has the important benefit of boosting connectivity in the flats of residents living 15 storeys and higher.
With Huawei and Ericsson, Singtel is to roll out 5G, a cellular technology capable of 20Mbps and zero latency for mass mobile broadcasts and M2M communication. “We will launch 5G in select areas like Changi Airport and the financial district by 2018 and then build out the network nationwide,” says Singtel’s Edmund Quek.
Singapore is not a big enough market on its own for international businesses, instead marketing itself as a base to reach 800 million people in Asia Pacific. That’s why media giants like Discovery Networks and Walt Disney base their APAC operations there as do corporates such as Unilever while AV outfits like US LED firm SiliconCore maintain a local presence.
“The biggest challenge for companies investing in APAC is risk that the deal they think they’ve signed, for property for example, might not be honoured,” says Gabriel Lim. In contrast he says investors favour Singapore because of its robust IP protection.
Fifty years ago, emerging from colonial rule, the city-state’s prospects were not good. “What would it take to convince investors to sink money in Singapore to build infrastructure and build factories and create jobs?” poses Angeline Poh, assistant chief executive, content and innovation at IMDA. “We needed the rule of law, skilled labour and predictability in the system to inspire confidence.” To that concrete mix, Singapore has now added technological innovation.

Case study – World’s first driverless taxi
A fleet of autonomous taxis is planned to be on Singaporean roads by 2018 run by nuTonomy, a 2013 spin-out of joint venture research by MIT and the National University of Singapore. Permission for test on public roads have been ongoing since August in the 2.5-square-mile business and residential district one-north (a driver is installed in the back for safety while tests continue). The cars are modified Renault Zoes and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics are fitted with six sets of Lidars plus two cameras on the dashboard to scan for obstacles and detect changes in traffic lights. Autonomous taxis could ultimately reduce the number of cars on Singapore’s roads by two thirds to 300,000. Having beaten Google and Uber to launch, nuTonomy plans to export the model to other Asian cities and Europe. The smart vehicles project first adapted golf buggies, then mobility scooters before electric-powered road cars.