Features - Senserbot

Singapore start-ups making inroads into South Korea, Japan

Senserbot Admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 18:14:47 +0000

3 July 2021

Featured on The Straits Times:

Meanwhile, a Singapore-made robot that can sort out library books is now deployed in a facility in the southern port city of Yeosu.

Senserbot CEO Peter Mao posing with an Aurora robot, which is able to sort books at libraries. PHOTOS: SENSERBOT

Mr Peter Mao, CEO of Senserbot, the firm that made the robot, said it has “attracted quite a fair bit of attention in the library market in South Korea” and the company has appointed a new Korean partner to market its products.

“The Aurora robot is setting a new level of innovation in library automation using robots,” Mr Mao told ST. “The demand for the Aurora robot is there and we intend to seize it and take a large market share in the Korean market.”

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Shelf-Reading is Too Onerous, Why Not Get a Robot To Do It For You?

Senserbot Admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 17:54:59 +0000

4 February 2021

Featured on Startup Info:

We talked to Peter Mao of Senserbot Pte Ltd about the world’s first HF RFID library robot for shelf-reading, stocktake, and item location of books, and he had the following to say:-

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Peter Mao: Fortunately, we are all doing fine in this time of global crisis. The only issue is my wife, a French lady from Normandy, and I are unable to go back to France to visit her mother and overseas in Japan and Botswana to see our two daughters.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Senserbot.

Peter Mao: I used to study in France, and from there, I have more than 30 years of experience running companies in the IT, software, and Telco sectors. I also invested in a software start-up company in Lannion in Britanny, France, and was there running the company as the CEO.

In 2016, I met this group of scientists from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) that developed the shelf-reading robot. I went in as an angel investor, and Senserbot was then started as a spin-off from A*STAR.

How does Senserbot innovate?

Peter Mao: Senserbot’s story began with a collaboration between Singapore’s National Library Board and the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*Star), a statutory board established by the government of Singapore to support research and development across various industries. In a bid to radically transform the daily operations of Singapore’s information industry, A*Star’s scientists were approached to devise an innovative solution for one of the major difficulties faced by libraries – the issue of erroneously placed books and the number of man-hours wasted on correcting them on a daily basis. Senserbot then developed the world’s first HF RFID library robot for shelf-reading, stocktake, and item location of books. This robot helps the librarians handle the most onerous part of their daily tasks, leaving them more time with the library patrons and other valuable tasks.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Peter Mao: The coronavirus pandemic definitely slowed down our business as many discussions with overseas or even local partners and customers took a pause as no one knew what was going to happen next. There were many problems we had to overcome but fortunately, we managed to survive through this crisis, and things are all moving and getting better now. We also actually witnessed the library customers moving aggressively towards automation now as the library starts to slowly open, and our shelf-reading robots are becoming more useful as the library move towards a light-touch approach with fewer humans.

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

Peter Mao: Yes, certainly during the pandemic as there was a dramatic slowdown in the business, but because we have existing businesses and were on a few other robotic projects, I managed to keep my staff intact without any reduction in headcounts and also with some good subsidies from the Singapore government to help companies to keep their headcounts during this crisis. This definitely helped a lot.

The best result is that the staff are highly grateful and appreciative to be able to keep their jobs and are now very motivated to perform to make sure that the company excels. We are now more like a family, and our relationship is forged by hot coals and fire, which is a lesson I learned. Take care of your staff in bad times, and they will take care of your business for life .

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Peter Mao: Yes, we developed a set of remote monitoring tools and remote deployment and installation tools. These were quite sophisticatedly done and very useful during the pandemic.

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Peter Mao: Yes. Since businesses all slowed down, we were fortunate to be able to get help from the government with different grants that help SMEs to get past this crisis. This includes grants for company development, technology development as well as human resource.

Your final thoughts?

Peter Mao: Never give up and fight for what you believe in, not only in business but in people management as well. Take care of your people, and they will fight for you and follow you where you go.

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Behind-the-scenes: Robots in S’pore’s libraries do the manual work so humans don’t have to

Senserbot Admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 17:18:48 +0000

20 October 2020

Featured on Mothership:

Image Cedit: mothership

A Shelf-Reading Robot

This, dear reader, is a Shelf-Reading Robot, which I had the pleasure of meeting one September afternoon.

Created by local company Senserbot, this Shelf-Reading Robot is the product of a collaboration between the National Library Board (NLB) and A*Star to tackle a frustrating problem: The issue of erroneously placed books and the number of man hours wasted on correcting them on a daily basis.

Previously, this had to be done manually and as you might imagine, it was extremely labour-intensive. The robot, however, is able to do it faster and with better accuracy.

The Shelf-Reading Robot is able to scan the RFID tags in library books on the shelves, making sure that they are 1) in the right place, and 2) in the right order. And how effective is this robot, you ask? Very effective, as it apparently has a 99 per cent accuracy score.

Tampines Regional Library deploys two Shelf-Reading Robots and both of them can complete scanning most of the library’s collection in one night (yes, they only work at night).

The next morning, the system spits out a report, which provides the misplaced books and their location, allowing library staff to manually replace the books.

“So it’s doing it every night, so we have very up-to-date records every day,” says Library Manager Lee Yee Fuang.

This is very important not just for the library, but for patrons as well because then it is super easy to search for the location of a library book — right down to the shelf it is on — on the NLB app:

Image credit: mothership

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Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library RFID Collection Inspection Robot

Senserbot Admin — Sat, 16 May 2020 15:17:47 +0000

16 May 2020

Watch feature of Aurora robot in action in the Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library!

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The Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library’s Robot is Receiving Great Fame

Senserbot Admin — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 13:49:56 +0000

31 January 2020

The Book Inspection Robot organizes correctly than human
Other state-of-the-art technologies can be experienced

The Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library. ©AI Times

It has been a month when The Yeosu Yi Sun-sin Library has opened, now the popularity among citizens is increasing with the number of visitors surpassing more than 100,000. The library has been critically acclaimed as ‘futuristic’ because it’s been melted into various technologies which are part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

According to the city authorities on the 31st, the library opened in last December with spending $16,750,000 from the government expenditure and other construction expenses. The area is 5,622m²/60,514ft² with total five stories – it is the largest library in the south-eastern Jeolla Province.

The name of the library Yi Sun-sin, describes the historical relationship of the admiral Yi and Yeosu City. During the Iimjin War(1592-1598) he brought victories against the Japanese navy in Yeosu. His loyalty to his country is highly respected by modern Koreans. From the early days of the library’s opening, it was crowded by many Yeosu citizens to see the Coding Robot, the Book Inspection Robot, and 3D Printer.

Especially the Book Inspection Robot, which is based on the artificial intelligence algorithm, has been gaining huge popularity from citizens. The robot finds books from wrong places, organizes and put onto the right shelves. It is connected through the internal network, human employees can check in real-time whether it’s doing job correctly or not. This robot takes less than six hours to organize about 50,000 books. Also sensors installed in robots detect the movement of people; it prevents the robot from crashing itself.

The Book Inspection Robot. ©AI Times

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I, Partner – A*STAR’s Technologies In The Public Service

Senserbot Admin — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 13:40:54 +0000

30 January 2020

As technologies become essential in the delivery of public services, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has been working with public agencies to create solutions that improve effectiveness and efficiency.

Shelf-aware

The Autonomous Library Shelf Scanning (Aurora) robot goes on patrols, too – but its mission is to spot errant library books rather than criminals.

Aurora was developed in response to the National Library Board’s desire to improve its shelf-reading process. Using radio frequency identification tags and laser mapping technology, Aurora can scan shelves with 99% accuracy, lightening the load of support librarians, volunteers and interns.

Together, the NLB and A*STAR ran a pilot programme with the robot at Pasir Ris Public Library in 2015. The NLB now deploys Aurora in six public libraries.

During this period, work processes were developed to ensure a “smooth human-robot collaboration”, says Mr Peter Mao, Chief Executive Officer of Senserbot, which worked on the pilot and has since spun off from A*STAR to launch as a commercial entity.

“For example, the robots will pass the data obtained in nightly scans to the librarians in the morning,” he explains. “Then the librarians will work on the results to accelerate the shelf-reading process.”

Previously, librarians had to manually inspect the shelves and look out for books placed in the wrong categories – not to mention those that are deliberately hidden by visitors who want sole access to certain titles.

Now, librarians can get right to shelving the books. With a lightened workload, they can also focus on more pressing customer services.

Library users can heave a sigh of relief knowing that this robot is not equipped with forensic capabilities to track the source of misplaced books.

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Future knowledge base”… “Yi Sun-Shin Library” opened in Yeosu, South Korea

Senserbot Admin — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 13:32:14 +0000

27 December 2019

▲ A collection of books inspection robot at Yi Sun-Sin Library in Yeosu City

Yeosu City, Jeollanam-do, announced on the 27th that the Yi Sun-Shin Library opened

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Not enough service staff? Why not ‘hire’ a robot

Senserbot Admin — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 13:22:23 +0000

13 August 2019

Robbie helps scan books in the library

Robot Robbie at work in Temasek Polytechnic’s library. The workhorse saves library officers 16 man-hours a day so they can undertake less tedious work. ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG

Robbie moves along the aisles of Temasek Polytechnic’s library with a barely audible hum.

With its four arms, it scans the books unobtrusively for their radio-frequency identification tags, logging the location of each book into an online database that can be searched by librarians and students.

Although most students pay no heed to it, Robbie is a workhorse, saving library officers 16 man-hours a day so they can now undertake less tedious work.

Before the robot – nicknamed Robbie by staff – joined the team in May last year, library officers would spend an hour a day manually checking whether books were in the right place on the shelves.

Temasek Polytechnic library director Puspa Yeow, 58, said: “Robbie is part of how we improve productivity and the user experience.”

The robot’s casing is customised to be transparent so that students can see what is inside it. Its arms automatically adjust to the height of the bookshelves.

If it is in any trouble, such as experiencing low battery or confronted by an obstacle, it e-mails staff to ask to be rescued.

Local firm Senserbot, a spin-off from a project by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, developed the robot.

Senserbot won a National Library Board contract last month, through main contractor NEC, to provide its library inventory robots, called Aurora, to six libraries.

The first deployment is at library@harbourfront while a pilot robot has been at Pasir Ris Public Library since the start of last year.

A separate pilot programme is expected to commence in Japan in the coming weeks.

The robot costs about $130,000 for its basic configuration in both hardware and standard software.

Senserbot chief technology officer Ho Chin Keong, 45, and vice-president for research and development Li Renjun, 34, designed the first prototype in 2015, in response to complaints from librarians about some of their laborious tasks.

Dr Ho said: “Singapore has been more of a receiver than an innovator for tech, but I believe we can develop great tech locally and push it out to the world.”

Library executive Maizurah Idris, 28, says Robbie has become like a “little brother” to her as she takes it to its home – a yellow fire-safety cabinet – at night.

Ms Maizurah has more time for her archival duties of indexing the polytechnic’s videos and memorabilia now that she no longer has to rearrange books on the shelves.

She said: “(Robbie) is very helpful for library staff. We can embark on our own projects and focus on our work.”

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Singapore Pasir Ris Public Library reopens, revealing the Library of the Future, complete with a Robot and Self-Service Capabilities

Senserbot Admin — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:16:47 +0000

27 October 2017

This past Saturday, the National Library Board reopened the doors to the Pasir Ris Public Library, welcoming a community of old and young alike after nine months of renovations.

The library, located on level 4 of the White Sands mall, is the first of its kind to have a dedicated area for teens, managed by teens. It also hosts a bevy of new technology such as the Shelf-Sorting Robot, Self-Service Centres, Digital Book Trailer Screen, and Newspaper Reading Computer.

Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, welcomed the community to the rejuvenated library in his opening remarks.

“Over the years, Pasir Ris town has grown and matured… I am sure the revamped Pasir Ris library will be well used by all our residents, all ages,” stated Mr. Teo Chee Hean, “The new Pasir Ris Library has been working closely with our residents, listening to your feedback to see what kinds of facilities and services you would like to have, so do look out for the many special features when you walk around because some of these are things that residents have asked for.”

Following his speech, Mr. Teo Chee Hean and his fellow Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC members were taken on a guided tour of the revamped facilities, paying special attention to the novel technologies integrated within the library.

Shelf-Reading Robot from NLB and A*STAR

One of the biggest jaw-droppers was the new Shelf-Reading Robot, created with the help of the A*STAR Research team. This robot is being piloted at the Pasir Ris Library to help aid the senior staff with the menial task of manually checking all of the book shelves.

The robot operates during library after hours, scanning shelves and identifying titles that have been incorrectly placed. The robot then generates reports to inform the librarians of the specific shelves and titles they must attend to.

When we saw the robot in action, it took a few minutes for it to adjust to the arrangement of the books on the 4 shelves. It then began lazer scanning the titles on the second and fourth shelves, keeping track of which titles were out of place.

Mr. Teo Chee Hean had asked, “How does the robot know where it is?” An A*STAR research team member attending to the robot answered, “It will know how the book shelf is organized… it will conduct the sequencing based on the book titles.”

To that, Mr. Teo Chee Hean gleefully rearranged several titles to test the efficiency of the robot. A few minutes later, the A*STAR research team member handed the Deputy Prime Minister 2 book titles that the robot recognised as ‘out-of-place’.

This robot is to be piloted at the Pasir Ris Public Library and NLB will continue to improve the system for rollout to other libraries in the future.

Is this what our future libraries are going to look like?

The Pasir Ris Public Library is the Library of the Future. It comes to no surprise that the National Library Board was recently honored with the bronze award for the Best Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology (Public Sector) at the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) Awards 2015.

“The revamped Pasir Ris Public Library has created a space for teens and introduced new digital initiatives for the convenience of all library users. It will be a role model for all libraries in Singapore,” stated Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Communications and Information.

Experiencing the Pasir Ris Public Library first-hand allowed us to realise how far we have come from the traditional libraries, characterised by wooden shelves, low ceilings, and few computers in sight.

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High Tech Self Help – Singapore’s Library robot

Senserbot Admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:04:38 +0000

3 August 2016

Library holdings are only useful if they’re findable. While many libraries focus on the digital aspects of improving search, for print collections at least, even recommending the most relevant titles ultimately falls short if they’re not on the right shelf. Misfiled materials can lead to major controversies, such as the one that recently led to the resignation of former Boston Public Library president Amy Ryan, as well as that staple of library human interest stories, the rare book or manuscript “discovered” in a library or archive. However, the process of finding out if things have been properly shelved is time-consuming and never ending, as materials are continuously moved even if they don’t circulate outside the building. The task is often handled by support staff, interns, or volunteers, but Singapore’s National Library Board has a new alternative: a library robot. It’s the brainchild of researchers at the infocomm research branch of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), a global research organization with 14 research institutes throughout Singapore. The agency developed the machine in response to the national board, which wanted to improve productivity in shelf reading operations but found no commercial solution available. Instead, a group of robotics, wireless communication, antenna design, data analytics, and visual computing experts came together to create a solution of their own. The result is AuRoSS (autonomous robotic shelf scanning system), a robot that can navigate and scan library shelves for misplaced books. The not-at-all-humanoid robot wheels around library stacks, using RFID and laser mapping technology to scan shelves with 99 percent accuracy. It then produces a report of missing and out-of-sequence books that can be given to a staffer for easy re-shelving.. In developing the robot, researchers faced a few big hurdles. The robot had to be made small enough to get between shelves, but big enough to reach high and low locations. It had to be far enough away to not threaten shelved books, but be able to get close enough to “see” individual books and make sure they were in place. And it had to be able to handle varied library layouts. Eventually, said researcher Renjun Li in a release, “we decided to detect the shelf surface itself, and use that as a reference.” Using the shelf as a guide, the robot is able to successfully navigate even off-sized shelves. Dr. Ho Chin Keong, deputy department head of the Cognitive Communications Technology Department within A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research, told Library Journal that the team was tasked with demonstrating the robot inside a newly-renovated library on a tight schedule. A literal curveball was thrown to the robot with the installation of curved library shelves. Only a few of the shelves were available, so the team had to figure out whether AuRoSS was capable of navigating special shelving without much to work with. “We had to do a public demonstration on the day of re-opening,” recalled Keong. The robot passed the test, reading the curved shelves at the Pasir Ris Public Library just as well as traditional shelving. Currently, AuRoSS is being demonstrated at night within select Singapore public libraries. The next step, said Keong, is gathering commercial interest for a larger pilot program. For Keong, the most gratifying part of designing a whirring robot shelving assistant is seeing how librarians light up when they realize that the amount of time they need to set aside for such tasks can be reduced. But he assures those worrying about automation reducing library jobs that his invention will never replace librarians themselves. “Definitely not,” he said. “The robot only performs the most menial and time-consuming part of the shelf reading operation.” That leaves librarians free to do what they do best, he said: engage with their patrons.

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Features - Senserbot

Singapore start-ups making inroads into South Korea, Japan

Shelf-Reading is Too Onerous, Why Not Get a Robot To Do It For You?

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Senserbot.

How does Senserbot innovate?

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Your final thoughts?

Behind-the-scenes: Robots in S’pore’s libraries do the manual work so humans don’t have to

Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library RFID Collection Inspection Robot

The Yeosu Yi Sun-Shin Library’s Robot is Receiving Great Fame

The Book Inspection Robot organizes correctly than humanOther state-of-the-art technologies can be experienced

I, Partner – A*STAR’s Technologies In The Public Service

Future knowledge base”… “Yi Sun-Shin Library” opened in Yeosu, South Korea

Not enough service staff? Why not ‘hire’ a robot

Robbie helps scan books in the library

Singapore Pasir Ris Public Library reopens, revealing the Library of the Future, complete with a Robot and Self-Service Capabilities

High Tech Self Help – Singapore’s Library robot

The Book Inspection Robot organizes correctly than human
Other state-of-the-art technologies can be experienced