BioTeke, a Chinese company, 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 needing a laboratory.
The robot, according to the company, 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 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.
The robot contains different modules for sampling, extraction, purification, amplification, detection, and results from the 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 center at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
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