From Shenzhen Business Daily
Nucleic acid testing is essential for screening and confirmation of COVID-19. The collection of throat swabs is an important step for nucleic acid testing, but health care workers run the risk of being infected during the collection process.A team led by Wang Hongqiang, assistant professor of mechanical and energy engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology, has developed the first intelligent portable robot for collecting throat swabs, which could be a useful assistant for medical workers.
Under the guidance of Rong Yiming, the director of the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering of South University of Science and Technology, Wang Hongqiang's research group was actively engaged in scientific research to fight against the epidemic. According to the novel Coronavirus nucleic test sample collection, a series of research work was carried out and a "portable intelligent robot for collecting throat swabs" was developed.Members of the project research team worked day and night to tackle scientific research problems, from scheme discussion and model design to the production of the first prototype, which took only two months.It is reported that the robot can be used to collect clinical pharyngeal swab samples for respiratory tract infections such as COVID-19 virus and influenza A virus. While improving the sample quality, it can play an effective role in protecting medical staff, avoiding cross infection between doctors and patients, and reducing the burden on medical staff.
According to the introduction, compared with artificial throat swab sampling, the robot sampling has many advantages.It can be operated remotely, which ensures complete isolation of patients and medical staff and greatly reduces the risk of cross-infection.The robot is small in size, light in weight, easy to carry and set up, convenient for outpatient service and community popularization, and convenient for large-scale sample collection;Low cost, no matter large or small medical institutions have the ability to purchase, convenient for mass layout and efficient collection;Simple structure, conducive to rapid batch production;The operation is easy to use and easy to learn, and it can operate multiple robots at the same time to carry out work at the same time, which improves the efficiency and reduces the burden of medical staff;The contact force can be precisely controlled. Compared with manual sampling, the robot sampling process is more gentle and soothing because it is difficult to control the force and easy to cause discomfort.
The whole robot system consists of two parts, the patient end and the medical staff end. The doctor only needs to operate the remote control handle in the hand. By observing the oropharyngeal video image taken by the robot terminal camera, the patient can be sampled by pharyngeal swab.At present, the second prototype has been completed, and all functions have been optimized and can be realized effectively and reliably, which has attracted wide attention.At present, the research team is working hard to promote the practical application of robots.
