The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has launched CovidInArea, a privacy-preserving mobile-friendly app which integrates and visualizes open data. It includes a list of buildings visited by cases who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus in the past 14 days (hereinafter referred to as “incident places”), from the Department of Health (DoH) of the HKSAR Government as an easily accessible heatmap, providing a free location-based tool for users to understand their risk due to proximity with the incident places.

Making use of big data mining and machine learning techniques, a team led by Prof. Gary CHAN Shueng-Han from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering has designed and developed the app, which consists of a real-time heatmap for browsing the locations of the incident places at a glance.

Unlike other existing platforms and apps which mostly require users to check the locations manually, CovidInArea runs the check automatically by providing real-time GPS support for mobile users. It is the first public COVID-19-related app available in both Google Play Store and Apple App Store developed by a university for city-wide use anywhere in Hong Kong.

The heatmap pinpoints incident places given by DoH, based on data updated continuously as per the government’s related daily information release. By zooming in and out on the heatmap, users can immediately gain a complete picture of the incident places, which are indicated by hues of different temperatures, hence able to make informed decisions in their daily routine, path planning and keep safe distancing.

User privacy is ensured in CovidInArea, which requires no user registration and collects no personal information beyond GPS location.  All computations are carried out with results presented locally on the user’s phone, while the GPS location, once consumed, is immediately discarded without storage at any time.

In addition, with GPS on, users are enabled to easily visualise in a chart – over several days – the number of incidents placed in their proximity in real-time. Taking into consideration the distance, users’ dwell time, and number of places of incidence in proximity, the app also indicates the overall proximity risk using a colour radar chart:

Prof. Gary Chan stated that because the number of confirmed cases in Hong Kong has remained high as of late, the app provides a timely and user-friendly reference on incident places to help citizens stay vigilant of their surroundings and take precautions if necessary to proactively reduce the infection risk while commuting.

He added that with CovidInArea, users can take appropriate actions to plan daily routes, manage their health, and keep a safe distance from the incident places. The professor also thanked the government for opening up the data for public use to fight against COVID-19 together.

Prof. Gary CHAN Shueng-Han is an expert in the development of novel and precise sensing and positioning technologies for smart applications. The government has worked alongside him to develop a geofencing technology applied in the StayHomeSafe app to enforce local home quarantine orders. He has also innovated a privacy-preserving mobile app that senses registered Bluetooth signals to efficiently search for missing dementia patients in the city. His indoor navigation technology has also been deployed in many malls and venues.

From developing work-ready skills, and improving health services to improving access to digital technology, regional youth will be empowered to build their future through an AU$ 40 million investment by the NSW Government. The Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW recently announced the new AU$40 million ‘Our Region, Our Voice’ program, aimed at supporting regional youth to create their future.

He noted that this is an investment that has been shaped by youth for youth. 2000 young people in regional communities across the state were engaged in order to understand what matters to them and to ensure this investment will meet the needs of the next generation, now and into the future.

It is known that young people experience challenges differ depending on where they live, and the ‘Our Region, Our Voice’ Regional Youth Investment Program is about empowering regional youth to drive local solutions to local issues.

Grants worth as much as AU$3 million will be delivered for targeted local initiatives that ensure regional youth can reach their full potential in their local communities. The Minister for Regional Youth said the funding will be allocated across nine areas identified as high priorities by the Regional Youth Taskforce and Regional Youth Insights – the largest regional youth research project ever commissioned by the NSW Government.

He said that from more mental health support and improved career pathways to greater recreational activities and reliable public transport, this research told us exactly what our regional youth want and need.

He added that the record investment allows the NSW Government to deliver targeted and collaborative support measures that build on the work we are already doing to ensure regional youth reach their full potential, without having to move to a major city.

The ‘Our Region, Our Voice’ has funding available for projects to:

The $40 million package is part of the NSW Government’s record investment in regional youth through the 2022-23 NSW Budget. Applications for the Regional Youth Investment Program are now open and will close on 4 October 2022.

Digital tech to deliver benefits across the economy and society

The opportunities afforded by digital technologies are not constrained to technology-based companies and start-ups – they can add value across all parts of the economy.

For businesses, these technologies have the potential to help develop new products, access new markets, work more efficiently and improve the bottom line, better target consumer preferences through the use of data, and deliver safer working environments.

To enable this, the Australian Government is working to boost inclusion. The Government believes all Australians should have the opportunity to acquire digital skills regardless of their age, level of education or previous experience. The Government will collaborate with key stakeholders to explore initiatives to reduce the digital inclusion divide and support greater lifelong engagement in evolving technological resources.

The government believes that young people in Ho Chi Minh City will play a valuable role in digital transformation. According to the Deputy Director of the province’s Department of Information and Communication, Nguyen Gia Phong, community-based digital technology groups have been set up across the province with key members being young people. The groups have been giving guidance to each people in their community on how to use digital platforms.

He was speaking at a recent forum organised by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (HCYU), which aimed to help local youth adapt to and develop in a world where social life is undergoing strong digital transformation. It also looked to promote the key and pioneering role of HCYU chapters at all levels in the process of digital transformation and application of modern technology.

Participants at the event assessed the implementation of the Creative Youth initiative, which focuses on encouraging digital transformation, the development of the digital economy, and activities supporting start-ups by young people. They also shared experiences and good practices in the movement.

Currently, there are 209 community-based digital technology groups at communal levels and 1,891 groups at the village level, with a total of 9,950 members. The establishment of those groups was inspired by the community-based anti-COVID-19 groups, Phong noted. He said the Department of Information and Communication has asked the provincial HCYU committee to work together with local administrations in setting up and maintaining the operation of community-based digital technology groups.

A representative from the HCYU committee of Luc Ngan district shared the results of the application of digital technology to selling farm produce amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bac Giang in 2021. The committee coordinated with the provincial HCYU committee to conduct a programme, under which HCYU members volunteered to help local farmers sell lychees through digital trade platforms or business matching activities. This year, the Luc Ngan HCYU committee has continued to work with digital trade platforms like state-run Postmart and Voso for lychee selling. 823 tonnes of lychee have been sold through this channel.

Regarding young people’s role in community-based digital technology groups, they face problems such as local farmers not having smartphones or computers, and limited access to an Internet connection in remote areas. Delegates proposed that relevant agencies should invest more in digital infrastructure for public use such as Internet transmission lines, Wi-Fi networks, and computers serving digital transformation in localities.

A crucial task to recover and develop its local economy in the post-pandemic era is to promote all-around digital transformation. Ho Chi Minh City’s digitisation programme, issued in July 2020, aims for the digital economy to contribute 25% to its gross regional domestic product (GRDP) by 2025, and 40% by 2030. This year, the city wants to raise the digital economy’s proportion in the GRDP to 15%. It has prioritised ten sectors for digitisation: healthcare, education, transport, finance/banking, tourism, agriculture, logistics, environment, energy, and human resources training.

Many financial institutions invested in digital platforms and solutions well before 2020 to respond quickly to VUCA or the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity environment.

The digital transition was justified in retrospect as companies try to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, corporate leaders should think about a few key things and take steps to not only respond to severe business shocks but also reshape their businesses and plan for their recovery.

Global companies must be predictive and proactive in their decision-making to preserve business continuity and build enterprise resilience as businesses should simply turn up their speed and agility when a crisis arises so they can seize the chance.

Companies must also show agility in a crisis so that they can shift to similar or completely different product domains. Hence, the demonstration of speed has led to hopes for faster changes in the future and a new way of looking at past efforts, which are now seen as lacking a real driver for speed.

Optimised and creative digital user experiences are business necessities in today’s financial services firms, but they can’t be made with outdated technologies, organisational techniques, and legacy infrastructure.

Because of these changes, there was a “shift to digital,” which mostly confirmed what institutions already knew about the future of customer engagement. Instead, the most useful insight is probably how flexible the industry has been and how that has changed the way executives think about past and future transformation strategies.

With this, AIOps platforms are essential to modern digital infrastructure. They improve IT operations by using analytics and machine learning (ML) to make sure services are always secure, reliable, and high performing. AIOps takes data from different IT operations tools and uses AI/ML analytics to automatically find and fix problems as they happen.

The OpenGov Breakfast Insight on 1 September 2022 offered the latest information to top-level financial services industry leaders in Singapore on successful AIOps in the financial sector.

Leveraging AIOps in the Finance Industry 

Kicking off the session, Mohit Sagar, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, acknowledges that the Platforms for AI for IT Operations (AIOps) are important parts of modern digital infrastructure in the FSI.

Mohit believes that an organisation would gain a competitive advantage with a platform that supports operational intelligence and automatic services with the ability to deliver innovative AI, ML and automation. “When data provide genuine insights, you can take action that can make people understand and support.”

In the current VUCA (volatility, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment, Mohit explains, there are intrinsic characteristics that make a situation or condition difficult to analyse, respond to, or plan for. Understanding how to mitigate these characteristics can significantly enhance a leader’s strategic abilities and result in improved outcomes.

In this scenario, when correctly implemented, actionable intelligence provides a company with a strategic advantage over its competitors.

The term “actionable” indicates that the information is such that it offers the potential to be acted on – and should be used to act. When an organisation desires to act based on past experiences or behaviours, actionable intelligence comes into play. When organisations improve their market position because of actionable intelligence analysis, they gain competitive intelligence.

Actionable intelligence is frequently gathered in the context of big data, where there are enormous amounts of information and this information is used to make extremely precise decisions. Whereas actionable intelligence aids in future planning for a company and can boost market performance.

Citing Singapore as an example, Mohit observes that it has established itself as a centre for vaccine production and distribution because of the pandemic. It used the black swan event to reconsider how it can operate more efficiently. Singapore adapted to the changes brought about by COVID-19 TO develop into a smarter nation.

Eventually, many financial institutions are expanding their online offerings to strengthen their digital presence and meet their customers’ growing reliance on online banking. As a result, AIOps are essential for remaining competitive in today’s finance industry.

AIOps technologies help to prevent customer-impacting downtime by quickly locating and identifying problems within a system and determining their root cause. “AIOps can help protect against cybercrime and its possible disastrous financial effects on businesses, such as falling stock prices, damage to their reputations, and legal action, on top of the known financial losses.”

As more people get used to virtual experiences and the flexibility of always-on digital solutions, more people will use digital banking. But financial institutions must get ready for this change while also dealing with rising cybersecurity risks and higher customer expectations for uptime and cutting-edge technology.

AIOps are necessary to solve these problems and gain a competitive edge in the highly competitive financial industry.

Leading Successful AIOps for Financial Services

To deal with the huge growth in monitoring, data, complexity and user expectations, IT teams need to set up an AIOps platform that allows service-driven, autonomous remediation, according to Ravi Bedi, Head & Practice Lead, AI-Led Solutions, NEXT Solutions, NCS Group.

As the financial services industry moves toward digitalisation, it needs to be able to provide more business-critical services in hybrid environments. Ravi feels that IT operations are the most important part of any business in the modern world. Every year, new technologies, tools, and ways of doing things come out, which makes operations more complicated. Thus, “the IT team should be more collaborative.”

IT operations that rely heavily on cloud infrastructure need to deploy agile development methods. To keep up with the changing trends, IT operations need to scale up to meet the demand and keep innovating for better service.

On the other hand, cloud orchestration organises, manages and provides cloud components to a host of users. It helps organisations manage their IT operations in a cloud-heavy environment. With this, finding the right cloud strategy can transform and boost an enterprise.

In the current financial services industry, the quality of end-to-end digital experiences is what gives organisations a competitive edge and distinguishes great leaders from others. However, as IT systems become more complex, dynamic, diverse and hybrid, it becomes increasingly difficult for IT operations teams to meet deliverables, objectives, and mandates.

Legacy systems are frequently found at the core of traditional enterprise IT operations. This is primarily due to end-users’ extreme level of comfort with the current system, despite its obvious flaws.

Consequently, the cloud-first strategy is the optimal solution. The agility provided by modern, cloud-based IT operations management tools enables rapid organisation expansion. Hence, a cloud-based IT operations model enhances the security of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. In lieu of risking damage to the production environment, they can configure virtual machines to deploy applications.

With this, IT professionals are empowered to understand tools thoroughly and to detect and resolve problems before they occur. In addition to choosing the appropriate technology, it’s crucial to make sure that the company culture is in line with the new course and that the teams can support the new digital strategy.

A company’s culture is created by the individuals hired, the procedures used and the values upheld. These cultural factors interact with the modifications brought about by digital transformation. “Your digital transformation will suffer if these factors don’t change to accommodate impending change,” Ravi is firmly convinced.

A company may see slow user adoption and productivity loss if its digital transformation is not in line with its culture. “Therefore, whenever your organisational culture runs counter to the mindset of digital transformation or your specific project objectives, we advise changing it.”

Powering Service Level and Operational Efficiency Breakthroughs​ in Financial Services using AIOps​

According to Pravat Sutar, Vice President – Data Architect, Great Eastern Singapore, new technologies like cloud computing, virtualisation, and the Internet of Things (IoT) present new challenges for IT organisations.

“As these organisations expand their IT infrastructure, they must also modify their operations management processes to meet the demands of the business for performance, security, and cost control,” Pravat opines.

Most IT infrastructures have grown organically, and as a result, there are frequently significant gaps between various technologies and systems. In IT operations management, AI has a clear advantage as AIOps use artificial intelligence to streamline IT operations and speed up, automate, and solve issues in challenging modern-day IT environments.

Moreover, by mitigating risks, increasing operational efficiency and accelerating growth and innovation, AI enables businesses to achieve profitable digital transformations.

Pravat stated that AIOps in financial services could lead to identifying and preventing fraud, cost reduction and better customer service. “Indeed! AI plays a vital role in the digital economy.”

AIOps can identify a data breach in a matter of seconds, in real-time, as opposed to traditional technology and manual processes, which can take up to 6 months. AI can also lessen the possibility of false positives in traditional fraud detection techniques. It can track spending and deposit patterns over time, notify staff of anomalies, and halt payments in their tracks.

In addition, the combination of machine learning and data analytics drastically reduced errors and enhanced the quality of the financial services provided. The predictive analytics of AIOps provide early warnings through alerts that diagnose problems; reduce downtime, and save businesses thousands of dollars.

AIOps can also supplement or even replace several existing IT operations processes. AIOps builds upon Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Automation of IT processes (ITPA) to automate rule-based and repetitive tasks by combining big data with AI and machine learning.

Pravat thinks that customers’ daily use of digital channels has a significant impact on the quality of the experience they have in terms of delivering superior customer service. Bank customers need to be able to see transactions in real-time. Fraud departments need both real-time access to transaction data to build strong predictive models and proactive ways to spot outliers that could be signs of illegal activity.

Stop downtime that affects customers by quickly finding and identifying problems in a system and figuring out their root causes. As a result, service assurance gets better and the mean time to remediation, or MTTR, gets shorter. This makes customers happy.

Pravat believes that small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Singapore are switching to AI-based IT operation tools to improve service quality and meet changing customer needs in an agile way. So, the growing number of deployments and shorter development cycles have forced SMEs to use both DevOps and AIOps to stay competitive in the market.

According to Phillip Wu, Director, APEX Solutions, Dell Technologies, “the future should be a self-driving data centre.”  Attitudes and behaviours that allow people and organisations to see how data, algorithms and AI create new opportunities begin with an open mindset. And with this, an organisation’s technology adoption will occur.

“An outcome-based private cloud can be much more flexible, and we can deliver an outcome for you using AIOPs,” Phillip recommends.

Clients could use the best-of-breed Dell Technologies innovation, giving them the flexibility, they need to adapt and thrive. He also introduced “multi-cloud on your terms,” which delivers a straightforward and consistent cloud experience.

“We recommend cloud services to meet a variety of data and workload needs, allowing clients to streamline transformation, adjust to changing circumstances, and maintain control over their data,” says Phillip.

Mohit acknowledges that a growth mindset culture begins with leadership behaviour, and leaders must work on themselves to aid in organisational transformation. “Cloud is the future of IT” as it gives businesses a way to get technology that is more flexible, scalable and cost-transparent.

Cloud adoption is a way for businesses to use the internet to improve the scalability of their database capabilities while lowering costs and risks. Cloud technology lets companies grow and change quickly, speed up innovation, make businesses more flexible and streamline operations.

“Cloud-based technologies have almost completely changed the game in the IT world, and because individuals and organisations have varying business needs and requirements, they require custom cloud solutions tailored to their business specifications,” Mohit concludes.

Three enterprises have been chosen to improve animal welfare, productivity, and guest experience in Singapore’s wildlife parks. They triumphed in an innovation competition run by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and an organisation dedicated to protecting wildlife.

“IMDA believes that any and every organisation can tap digital innovation to transform and unlock new opportunities for business growth,” says Justin Ang, Assistant Chief Executive, Media, Innovation, Communications & Marketing, IMDA.

He continued by saying that they are helping the wildlife reserves group’s innovation journey by diagnosing business challenges, defining problem statements, and crowdsourcing solutions. He also expressed excitement for other partner groups to develop their digital transformation roadmap.

The innovation programme is housed on IMDA’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP), a digital platform for crowdsourcing that connects actual business problems with cutting-edge technological solutions. This will start the creation of a prototype and give them the chance to show how desirable, feasible, and viable their solutions are.

The management of wildlife precincts and animal care, on the other hand, typically uses less developed digital and technological solutions, according to the wildlife reserves group. The group began working with IMDA to tap into the technology ecosystem for creative solutions that would help improve welfare, facilitate the unique challenges of zoo operations, and unlock innovative new ways for the experience of the visitors as part of the group’s digital transformation towards smart, integrated wildlife park experiences and operations.

Since June 2021, the organisation for wildlife reserves has collaborated closely with IMDA, using the OIP to crowdsource solutions. The organisation took part in three innovation calls on the national digital innovation platform over the past year, which attracted 60 submissions and ultimately produced three proof-of-concept developments with promising outcomes.

One of the projects focused on the management and upkeep of the wildlife park’s aviary meshing, which is heavily dependent on manual inspections to find breaches and may be subject to human error. There are inherent restrictions from visual inspections, including the inability to examine the mesh above a certain height because of the average aviary’s size and height of 3,000 square metres and 35 metres, respectively.

The wildlife reserves group discovered through OIP an automated method that checks the integrity of the aviary mesh and detects any potential breaches more precisely while minimising human error. This method uses a vibration sensor network. Testing of the suggested fix is currently taking place.

As of now, OIP has helped solve problems in industries like manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare using technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality and virtual reality.

Meanwhile, the Singapore National Parks Board (NParks) together with its partners recently revealed the release of Fin Finder, the first mobile app in Asia that uses AI to visually identify shark and ray species that are being traded illegally.

Officers from the Singapore National Parks Board will use the app to combat the illegal wildlife trade. They are currently required to collect the fins from each shipment for DNA testing to identify the species, which can take up to a week to complete.

Thus, by enabling officers to take photos of fins that will be compared against a database of more than 15,000 images of shark and ray fins via an AI-driven algorithm in the app, Fin Finder streamlines this procedure.

The AI-powered app provides visual identification of shark and ray species on-site in a matter of seconds and will also enable officers to quickly flag suspicious fin shipments for additional DNA testing to stop the illegal trade in shark and ray fins.

The Center for Child Development (CCD) at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) announced the release of a textbook entitled Teaching News Literacy and Critical Thinking in the Digital Age and an interactive learning mobile app called “Smart News Rookies” to promote news literacy education among junior secondary students in the upcoming academic year. The textbook will be distributed to secondary schools in September.

Producing the textbook and the mobile app is part of the three-year interdisciplinary project “Promoting Smart and Positive News Engagement among Hong Kong Junior-Secondary School Students: News Literacy Education in the Digital Age” launched in September 2019.

The textbook introduces essential news literacy concepts, such as news values, identification of misinformation on social media, critical thinking in news and privacy protection. The textbook provides a positive impact on news literacy training in secondary education and includes real-life examples and interactive exercises. It was designed to help teachers and students develop the necessary skills to navigate and take control of the news they may come across in the complex news environment and digital landscape.

The project team has also developed a learning mobile app entitled “Smart News Rookies” to stimulate students’ understanding and interest in learning about news literacy. It features five animated videos on the core concepts of news literacy and various interactive activities such as quizzes and surveys. The app is currently available for free download from two leading app stores.

Dr Kelly Ku said that she believed that the textbook and app will be useful in enhancing students’ awareness of the information environment online. She noted that technology has greatly changed the way we receive news information. With the flood of information in the digital age, the skills students learn can empower them to form a good habit of receiving news information, such as identifying fake news on social media.

Meanwhile, Ms Ann Choy, Project Officer of CCD and lead author of the textbook, stated that the materials were very relevant in the current news and media climate. It is hoped that the project provides educators with ideas on how to tackle the issues that students may encounter on social media and provide students with the adequate skills to become smart news users.

In addition to the textbook and mobile app, the project team has organised a series of workshops on news literacy training in seven secondary schools for around 370 students since 2020. Three additional workshops were held for 300 teachers on the news literacy education programme.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the training, the team conducted a research study on 101 participating students. The findings showed that the students significantly increased their awareness of fake news and were less likely to believe fake news after finishing the learning workshops. Some students also reflected on how they were more likely to report fake news to the authorities, filter out false information and alert others.

The findings indicate the usefulness of news literacy and the need to boost critical thinking skills amongst youths in Hong Kong as they receive information in a complicated online news environment.

The project is supported by the Quality Education Fund and was led Dr Kelly Ku, Associate Professor of the Department of Education Studies at HKBU. Other key members of the project team include Dr Celine Song, Associate Professor of the Department of Journalism at HKBU, and Dr Masato Kajimoto, Associate Professor of Practice at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at The University of Hong Kong.

Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is improving safety for everyone working in potentially hazardous environments with a new training package that uses virtual reality (VR) to simulate risk scenarios. Participants in the training will gain a practical understanding of relevant control measures in a safe environment, including the consequences of emergency events that can result from specific hazards when the control measures are not implemented.

The Director of the Data61 Immersive Environments Lab and lead product developer stated that the new training package draws on over 25 years of CSIRO research into how Interactive Computer Graphics and Computer Vision can help improve productivity and safety.

The team has been able to translate innovations from the research domain into a training platform that gets more out of the immersive display hardware that is becoming widely accessible today. The software architecture is incredibly versatile, and this means new training modules can now be created for additional scenarios or training content more rapidly.

The team, which includes domain experts from across CSIRO, continues to push the envelope to ensure their work maximises its impact. In addition, they are working on an Augmented Reality version of the training platform that can integrate digital holograms into a relevant physical environment through smart glasses.

The work on this project has already led to new research explorations and university collaborations – particularly around how Artificial Intelligence can assist immersive technologies to adapt to individual users, their needs and their environments.

The virtual environment is modelled after a generic CSIRO laboratory. Focusing on safety and risk management, participants will first complete a theoretical component before donning the VR headset and completing scenarios based on potential real-life incidents, such as a chemical spill, and a failed pressure vessel releasing hazardous gas.

Participants will be placed in scenarios that will enable them to develop confidence while providing opportunities for some amount of exploration balanced with course correction before potential mistakes occur.

CSIRO’s Deputy Director and Science Director of Mineral Resources, Dr Louise Fisher said the new VR training modules will enable researchers to explore hazards and risk scenarios as well as receive feedback on their safety behaviours in a risk-free environment.

“When we become used to our workplace environment it can make it easier to not see the hazards around us,” Dr Fisher said.

Through this training, participants, including over 2,000 of CSIRO’s people, can practice their responses to simulated incidents in an immersive environment that is both familiar but also not their everyday lab. Similarly, people can train to work in higher-risk environments before entering them in reality, she added.

The new VR training package is available to research institutes and organisations located in Australia that undertake work in a laboratory setting, or similar. CSIRO is not charging participants to access this training.

This training package was developed following an incident at a CSIRO facility in Melbourne in 2017, after which CSIRO entered an enforceable undertaking to improve work health and safety risk management in CSIRO laboratories and to share the new VR training package to the benefit of others.

The Changi Chapel and Museum (CCM) presents new content and artefacts in an intimate and engaging format to tell the story of prisoners of war and civilians interned in Changi prison camps during the Japanese occupation. The National Museum of Singapore, which manages CCM, has been collecting stories and personal objects from families of former internees to highlight their personal experiences since its renovation.

With this, CCM debuted Temi, a museum guide who moves around on wheels and greets visitors with audio and videos displayed on a flat screen. Temi is a commercial robot that has been programmed and trained to be a tour guide for the museum depicting life as a POW during WWII. The museum’s narrative focuses on remembrance and reflection, encouraging visitors to consider both the hardships endured by the internees, as well as their courage and resilience in the face of adversity.

Temi, despite being petite and reaching the waist level of an average adult, possesses the necessary intellect and wisdom to navigate and lead museum visitors through various exhibits entirely on its own.

By narrating tales and playing videos that provide context for the visible physical exhibits, it improves visitors’ museum experiences. All visitors need to do is sign up at the door and communicate with Temi using the touchscreen. As a result, visitors can use Temi whenever they like rather than having to wait for scheduled tours led by human tour guides.

The National Heritage Board contacted GovTech for solutions to support its human tour guides at the beginning of the project. The team decided to build its mechanical tour guide on top of an already-built, commercially available robot after carefully weighing their options.

Engineers from GovTech created a customised app to show the videos to visitors. They also took care of mapping Temi’s path through the museum. This involved mapping out each stop along the tour route so that the robot could move independently.

Temi uses a lidar sensor to detect obstacles in its path, so it won’t run into other people or things that are in the way. Additionally, contractors were hired to apply stickers to specific translucent glass doors so that Temi would recognise the door as something it should avoid.

Temi also can find its way back to the charging station when its battery is running low, so carrying it back is not necessary. Additionally, the robot can send signals that cause automatic sliding doors to open and remain open as it passes through.

Additionally, it can automatically reduce the volume of nearby exhibit videos that are also playing. This helps users concentrate on the information that Temi is presenting. The volume of the exhibit videos will return to its original setting once Temi has moved on.

The GovTech team had to retrofit Temi with some DECADA Edge hardware to make these features available. The gadget functions as a gateway to control the sound system’s volume reduction and opening of the glass doors. This is accomplished by the robot communicating with other sensors by relaying and sending messages from the robot.

Changi Chapel and Museum serves as a proof of concept for Temi. If the guide proves to be popular with museum visitors, additional robot guides of the same type will be deployed to other museums so that more visitors can benefit from them.

There is also the possibility of expanding Temi’s capacity to interact with other technological equipment. Temi can be programmed to coordinate a fully synchronised visual and audio show, for instance, by connecting to various lighting, sound, and IoT systems. This will create an immersive tour experience that engages the various senses of visitors.

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