Patrol robots are on a trial run in Singapore to help out public officers in detecting and deterring “undesirable” or bad social behaviors.

Ranked as the second safest city in the world and the first in Asia for quality of living, Singapore finds more ways to further improve and retain its status by strengthening its portfolio of surveillance tools in the guise of patrol robots.

While still on a trial-run basis, two autonomous patrol robots are already making rounds in high foot traffic areas in Central Singapore to detect improper social behavior. Such behavior that would fall under this category would be smoking in prohibited areas, violating COVID-19 safety measures, and improper parking of bicycles.

The two patrol robots, both named Xavier, can detect these bad social behaviors with the help of their embedded cameras. Once they have detected any bad social behavior, the patrol robots will trigger real-time alerts to the command and control center of Singapore’s public officers.

After this, the patrol robots will be flashing messages to the violator for education on proper behavior.

“The deployment of Xavier will support the work of public offers as it will reduce the manpower required for foot patrols and improve operation efficiency,” a spokesperson from Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency said.

However, as these patrol robots are on a trial basis, they will not be used for law enforcement during the three-week trial period.

Should Singapore’s trial run be a success, the use of patrol robots would be just one of the many tasks robots are helping humans with that we perhaps could see as a normal fixture in more countries to come.