Building Inspection, Maintenance and Facility Management
Autonomous Inspection of HDB Corridors
Challenge Statement Owner:
EM Services is a joint venture between the Housing & Development Board and Keppel Land Limited. They are one of Singapore’s largest estate and property management companies, with a robust track record in managing a diverse range of properties and townships in Singapore. Their portfolio includes the management of HDB residential units, retail and shop units, market and food centre stalls, as well as vehicle parking lots.
Background
As the Managing Agent (MA) for various Town Councils in Singapore, EM Services is responsible for carrying out monthly routine inspections of the corridors and stairways for all Housing and Development Board (HDB) blocks under their jurisdiction.
The current practice is for Property Officers (PO) to walk every block, conduct a sweep of each floor, visually identify obstructions, hazards and defects, and record them for follow-up actions. With HDB buildings ranging from 2 to 50 storeys and approximately 600 blocks under a single Town Council, this manual inspection process is very time- and manpower-intensive.
The Challenge
EM Services is looking for a robotic solution to automate the inspection for defects and hazards in the common corridors and staircases of HDB blocks, so as to reduce the time and manpower required to conduct these routine inspections.
Requirements
- Enable real-time connectivity and video streaming to a centralised Command Centre;
- Preferably enable real-time video analytics and identification of defects such as hazards, faulty lights, illegal placement of objects, etc.
The solution should:
- Perform the role of a PO, negating the need for staff to physically be present at the inspection site;
- Be able to forward or backward autonomously in the common corridors, and manoeuvre spaces that are narrower than 1.2 metres in width (Note: While standard HDB common corridors are 1.2 metres wide, residents often place objects such as flower pots and shoe racks in the space);
- Take lifts on its own;
- Be equipped with warning lights and voice annunciations to make its presence known to approaching human beings
- Give way to human beings, and in situations where the robot cannot resolve “right of way” conflicts or becomes stuck due to obstructions, there should be an option to remotely pilot the robot from the Command Centre;
- Operate quietly as it will be deployed between 11pm and 5pm, when there is less human traffic;
- Have a battery life of at least 6 hours;
- Capture images/point cloud data of the corridor and generate a 3D model of the corridor;
- Identify and classify defects, hazards, and obstructions, and pinpoint defect locations on a 3D digital twin of the residential block;
With the increasing deployment of service robots in housing estates, there is an emerging need to manage different robot types and makes, and thus a platform with a common interoperability framework (such as TR93) to manage these robots.
Proof-of-concept (POC)/Pilot Support
The pilot will be conducted in one of the Town Councils areas managed by EM Services.
EM Services will provide domain knowledge for lift interfacing.
