Chinese company debuts robot for ‘one-stop’ Covid-19 testing
- The device looks like a vending machine and can produce PCR test results in 45 minutes
- The robots could ease pressure on medical workers overwhelmed by routine Covid-19 screening, according to engineer
A Chinese company says it has developed a robot that can perform Covid-19 testing with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
The robot, which made its debut at the World Robot Conference 2022 in Beijing on Thursday, looks like a vending machine and provides accurate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results without the need for a laboratory.
The robot, developed by Chinese firm BioTeke, can give results for up to 80 users in 45 minutes – much faster than traditional methods. It can process samples from up to 320 people at a time.
There are other Covid-19 test robots on the market, but most of them focus on the sampling process, with robots standing in for on-site staff to collect oral swab samples. The samples are then sent to a laboratory for analysis, and it usually takes more than 12 hours for users to get their results.
“This new robot provides a one-stop alternative because it does testing independently,” said a BioTeke engineer surnamed Meng in an interview on Monday.
The robot contains different modules for sampling, extraction, purification, amplification, detection and result analysis, all of which are connected like the rows of a vending machine.
The sampling module was developed by BioTeke in cooperation with a research centre at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
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