In Singapore’s central enterprise district, supply robots now pound the pavements alongside smartly-clad businessmen. With two googly, animated eyes and lockers on their again, the robots navigate computerized doorways, elevators and turnstiles, delivering packages proper to an workplace’s entrance door.
These robots are the creation of Singapore-based AI logistics agency QuikBot Applied sciences. Alan Ng based QuikBot in 2021, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Eating places and eateries shuttered as folks sheltered in place, but e-commerce boomed within the pandemic years, inflicting the demand for supply providers to skyrocket.
But Ng noticed that there weren’t sufficient folks to get items the place they wanted to go. “We simply don’t have enough manpower,” Ng stated, significantly in wealthier economies like Singapore, Japan and Korea.
A vital, but expensive, a part of the method is last-mile supply: Getting a package deal from a neighborhood distribution hub to somebody’s dwelling or workplace. “A driver can take ten minutes to park the car below your building and bring the parcel to you,” he says. “Even with all our tech, we’re still stuck at the last mile.”
QuikBot, for now, has simply two supply robots and a wise locker. Collectively, they type an ecosystem that automates last-mile supply in city environments. Items are saved in sensible lockers, which sit atop a long-distance autonomous robotic known as the “QuickFox.” Packing containers are then transferred onto the QuikCat, a smaller supply robotic that may journey shorter distances to drop off items at their ultimate vacation spot. Prospects will get a textual content message with a one-time password, which they will use to open the field and acquire their parcels.
However Ng says QuikBot isn’t actually a robotics firm. “We don’t just sell robots. Our job is to help automate buildings,” he explains. “We connect the robot with the building so it can move freely within the space, and then whatever the company wants the robot to do, we can program it to help them with it.”
QuikBot is a part of a handful of startups exploring find out how to make robots work for last-mile supply. U.S.-based Serve Robotics is creating small autos for meals supply, and has signed agreements with each Uber and DoorDash.
The way forward for supply
In July, QuikBot introduced a partnership with international courier FedEx to roll out autonomous final-mile supply providers in Singapore. The 2 corporations beforehand ran a profitable pilot in two enterprise districts: South Seashore Tower and Mapletree Enterprise Metropolis.
AI-enabled robots may also help supply companies like FedEx scale back their fleet dimension and scale back carbon emissions, Ng says, claiming that QuikBot can result in deliveries which can be 30% sooner with 20% much less emissions.
In 2026, the corporate might be showcasing their tech on the Singapore Airshow—one among Asia’s largest aerospace and protection exhibitions—for the primary time.
Apart from fulfilling e-commerce deliveries, Ng hopes that his tech might be deployed in numerous areas, reminiscent of in hangars the place aircrafts are saved and maintained.
Aerospace workspaces are sometimes massive in dimension, he explains, and technicians could thus must traverse lengthy distances to acquire instruments and spare components whereas working to repairs planes.
“Our robots help to reduce unnecessary workload, by shortening the distance people have to walk,” Ng says. “Robotic delivery can replace a lot of menial and repetitive work.”
Courtesy of QuikBot Applied sciences
QuikBot has begun scaling globally, and are presently increasing operations to Japan and the UAE. The corporate additionally hopes to enter different cities within the Asia-Pacific area, together with Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Incheon and Seoul, Ng says.
Wanting ahead, the corporate additionally desires to automate different legs of supply, Ng provides. “Our next step is medium-mile delivery, which can be done with autonomous vehicles.”
Ng, finally, hopes to faucet the general public markets. “Hopefully we make it work, and get ourselves listed in NASDAQ or the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by 2030, and become a unicorn.”
