The world’s first robot that can independently collect nasopharyngeal swabs from humans for the COVID-19 nucleic acid test was revealed in Luohu on May 17.

It is co-developed by the Luohu Hospital Group and a Hangzhou-based technology company.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic last year, the Luohu Hospital Group has collected a total of 2.73 million samples for the nucleic acid test. Thousands of medical workers have taken part in the arduous and risky job.

The robot using artificial intelligence technology, can, under the control of a motion planning system, automatically take the nasopharyngeal swabs with its mechanical arm.

It can precisely position the face and nose with the assistance of a vision tracking system, and accurately control the force while collecting bio-samples.

The robot integrates the automatic workflow of calibration, collection and sanitization, and thus dispenses without any manual intervention in the entire nucleic acid sampling integral solution.

With the robots in place, more medical workers and resources can be freed to  treat emergency and severe cases to bring down the mortality rate.

Their developers say that, at present, the robot’s sampling efficiency is slightly lower than an experienced nurse. However, the analysis of the big data and the in-depth optimization in the future might improve its sampling capacity to a level twice that of a normal nurse.