China Introduces Robot Arms for Coronavirus Throat Swabs

China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday triumphantly announced the deployment of intimidating robot arms to perform throat swab coronavirus tests “with reasonable sampling accuracy and efficiency.”

The Global Times envisioned these robots replacing humans entirely in the coronavirus testing process, but for now they have been deployed on a test basis in the eastern Shandong province. The developers said the fully tested robot arms will be handed over to local officials for live deployment within a few days.

“There is demand from some local governments and hospitals in Shanghai, East China’s Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province, Central China’s Hunan Province and South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region,” the Global Times reported, quoting developers at the Advanced Mechanism and Roboticized Equipment Lab of Tsinghua University.

According to the lab, the robot swabbing arms were constructed early in the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, but have not been used until now, when the Omicron wave sweeping across China created a massive demand for nucleic acid testing. – READ MORE