Residents of Shenyang City, China, are swabbed to detect the presence of the Covid-19 by a robotic arm.
Euronews reports that the swab robots, wrapped in plastic, are controlled by a healthcare worker who follows all the operations inside a room adjacent to the one carrying out the screening operations. The goal of swab robots is obviously to minimize contact and reduce the risk of cross-contamination between people.
How the tampon robot used in China works
The robotic arm seems to be able to take a throat swab: as we know many people (even I have done at least two) are an absolutely routine medical procedure. Nonetheless, it is a delicate procedure. The person who wants to undergo the test simply opens their mouth and bites into a contraption to make sure the mouth remains immobile while the robot quickly does its job.
A voice from the swab robot goes beyond technology and into vintage, even telling the person being tested to say "aaah".
The robot, nicknamed Lingcai, is part of a larger mass testing campaign to fight a Covid-19 outbreak raging in Liaoning province, according to reports. Euronews .
Chinese health officials hope the swab robot will reduce the risk of infection, but there is a second important goal: to increase the speed of testing. Here we don't have European sources but we refer to Chinese ones. According to Chinese state newspaper Global Times, the tampon robot can automatically record the information of the test subjects.
