Singapore's HTX agency opened the Home Team Humanoid Robotics Centre on 30 September, a 29,000 square foot facility built to train humanoids for uniformed-service work. The first four tasks are hazardous-material handling, ambulance resupply, post-blast investigation and cell searches. The target date for working alongside officers is 2028.
Key takeaways
- A 29,000 sq ft facility with a simulated debris field, industrial pipes and valves
- Southeast Asia's first omni-directional, multi-robot overhead mobility system
- Four pilot tasks for the fire service, the police and the prison service
- VLA model training on NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs via a Singtel RE:AI partnership
- Partners: ST Engineering, Mistral AI, Field AI, General Robotics
Four tasks to start with
HTX is not starting from general competence but from four concrete scenarios.
| Task | Service |
|---|---|
| Hazardous-material containment and sampling | Civil Defence Force (SCDF) |
| Ambulance restocking | Civil Defence Force (SCDF) |
| Post-blast investigation | Police Force (SPF) |
| Cell searches for contraband | Prison Service (SPS) |
The common thread is work that is routine, physically demanding or dangerous. Opening the centre, Minister Edwin Tong stressed that robots are meant to augment Home Team operations, not replace officers.
A hall built for data collection
The interior reproduces real conditions: a post-blast debris field, industrial pipes and valves.
Above them runs an omni-directional overhead mobility system for several robots at once, which HTX calls the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. It allows falls and collisions to be tested without wrecking the machines.
Separate zones handle motion capture?Motion capture: Measuring body movement in three dimensions using cameras and markers. It yields reference data on where every joint sits over time., teleoperation and simulation. That is where the data comes from for Vision-Language-Action models and for agentic AI handling multi-step operations.
Whose hardware, whose models
ST Engineering signed an MOU during the launch and covers joint research, platform integration and cybersecurity.
Capabilities for the Home Team are being developed by Mistral AI, Field AI and General Robotics.
Training runs on HTX's sovereign infrastructure called NGINE, upgraded with NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs under a partnership with Singtel RE:AI.
Why it matters
Most humanoid programmes aim at the factory and the warehouse, where the environment is stable. Here it is the opposite, and that is a real test for embodied AI outside a production hall.
A state buyer also solves a problem commercial suppliers struggle with: access to data from real operations.
What's next
- The stated date for humanoids working alongside officers is 2028
- Before deployment the programme runs capability building, trials, validation, cybersecurity checks and reliability testing
- HTX has not said which humanoid platforms will be used for the four scenarios
