Singapore Trials Patrol Robots To Aid Authorities In Enhancing Public Health And Safety

It looks like Boston Dynamics’ Spot won’t be the only robot patrolling around in Singapore. The country’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) announced on Sunday that it has begun a three-week trial of two robots, known as Xavier, to patrol the city state’s Toa Payoh Central district. During its trial phase, the duo will autonomously navigate through the high foot traffic location to aid public officers deter “undesirable social behaviours.”

Rather than an intimidating chrome cladded bipedal law enforcer, the Xavier robots are quad-wheeled autonomous drones with cameras (including one with 360-degree capability) and a display, which are more R2-D2-like rather than Robocop. According to HTX, should its cameras detect individuals exhibiting the aforementioned misbehaviours, the robots will trigger real-time alerts to the command and control centre.

For clarity, the agency specified that offenses categorised as such include smoking in prohibited areas, illegal hawking, improper parking of bicycles within Toa Payoh Central’s HDB Hub, congregation of more than five individuals, and motorised active mobility devices and motorcycles on footpaths. If detected, the Xavier robots will display the appropriate message on its built-in screen to educate the public and deter such behaviours. A mere slap on the wrist, but embarrassing nonetheless for offenders, especially after getting nagged by a robot in public.

HTX iterated that the Xavier patrol robots would not be used for Singapore law enforcement during the three-week trial, which starts from 5 September 2021. “The deployment of Xavier will support the work of public officers as it will reduce the manpower required for foot patrols and improve operation efficiency,” the agency said.

YouTube Tests Hiding Video Dislike Count From The Public

YouTube is currently adding another new feature in its current list of experiments. This one though will likely not turn out well. What exactly the video hosting platform is testing? Hiding the dislike count on videos from the public. The numbers will still be visible to video uploaders.

The company announced this via the official YouTube Twitter account. And the company gave an interesting reason for this test. To quote, the company says that this is “in response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns”. The post also says that not everyone will be part of the “small experiment”. There’s also an accompanying image that shows what you’ll see if you are.

Now, on the one hand, it’s easy to see the company’s perspective. Smaller content creators on YouTube can get harassed via such targeted dislike campaigns. But on the other, If there really was such a targeted campaign, the number of dislikes not being visible wouldn’t really dampen it since it’s, well, a targeted campaign.

For the average user, the like to dislike ratio is important if you’re actually looking for information. After all, it’s the easiest way to gauge if the video is genuinely helpful. No one wants to spend 10 minutes and one second watching through a video, only to find that the content skirts around the topic in the title without actually addressing it.