On 28 July 2021, JTC announced that four companies will be setting up at the Punggol Digital District (PDD), two of which are collaborating with SIT in the areas of cyber security and robotics.

Spot making its rounds and impressing visitors at the ‘PDD: Connecting Smartness’ event.

Punggol Digital District (PDD), the future home of the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT)’s new campus, is well on its way to claim its status as Singapore’s first smart business district. JTC announced at the ‘PDD: Connecting Smartness’ event on 28 July 2021 that four companies – Boston Dynamics, Delta Electronics International (Singapore), Group-IB, and Wanxiang – have confirmed plans to set up offices in the district, bringing to life PDD’s ambition of being a living lab for new concepts and solutions.

Tightening Cyber Security through Industry Tie-Ups

PDD will house Singapore’s highest concentration of cyber security associations, including Group-IB, an international threat hunting and cyber intelligence firm. The organisation will collaborate with SIT to design and engineer a virtual testing environment for early-stage companies and start-ups to test their solutions for cyberattacks. Group-IB also partnered SIT, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and cyber security community, Division Zero, to organise the inaugural PDD Bug Bounty programme on 11 May 2021 at SIT@NYP Building. 

Building Capabilities in Field and Service Robotics

In addition to cyber security, SIT will also collaborate with Boston Dynamics and local start-up dConstruct Technologies on both the learning and applied research of robotics systems. Boston Dynamics, a global leader in developing highly advanced mobile robots that can traverse rough terrain, is one of the companies setting up in the PDD. Using Boston Dynamic’s Spot robot and dConstruct’s software programming tool, SIT students will be able to develop robotics solutions to improve campus experiences, such as last-mile delivery and smart campus management. The Spot robot has been operational since September 2019, when it was first used by the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) to trial robotics applications. Now, Spot will be used in PDD for applications such as the laser scanning of construction sites and inspecting remote or dangerous environments.

Bridging Academia and Industry

At the ‘PDD: Connecting Smartness’ event, Prof Tan Thiam Soon, President, SIT, as well as A/Prof Steven Wong, Director, Centre for Digital Enablement (CODE), introduced VIPs and guests to the areas of collaboration that industry can partner the university on. These include academic and applied research, education and training, and collaborative spaces, such as Design Factory@SIT and RaPID, where innovation can take place.