Coimbatore: Karthik, the Coimbatore engineer graduate who designed 'robotic food tray' to serve food and medicines to COVID-19 patients has now designed what he calls as 'COVID-19 Smart Swab' that can be used in collecting samples for COVID-19 testing. He awaits government assistance to design a fully automated version of the robot.
Coimbatore: Karthik, the Coimbatore engineer graduate who designed 'robotic food tray' to serve food and medicines to COVID-19 patients has now designed what he calls as 'COVID-19 Smart Swab' that can be used in collecting samples for COVID-19 testing. He awaits government assistance to design a fully automated version of the robot.
It may be remembered that Karthik, a native of Nagapattinam, and a resident of Vedapatti, Coimbatore for the past 10 years, designed a robotic food tray to help serve food and medicines to COVID-19 patients a few months ago. The gadget was designed to carry five to seven kg of weight. Though he attempted several times for a demonstration of this robot in front of the Minister for Municipal Administration S.P. Velumani, he was disappointed that he could not get an appointment with the Minister.
Later Karthik used the robot and demonstrated how transactions happening at TASMAC shops could be done without any human contact. Videos of this demonstration went viral.
Now, Karthik has designed a new robot for fetching mucus samples from people who come for COVID-19 testing. He demonstrated this at the Coimbatore Press Club today. Speaking at the demonstration Karthik said, "The new robot can be used at labs that conduct testing for COVID-19."
He added, "The robot can be used for collecting samples in a safe manner. Human effort can be avoided. This robot can be operated via an app on a cellphone. The testing can be completed swiftly within two minutes. The robot can prevent the spread of the virus, it can clean itself after each test. Also, it can help people who come for tests to perform proper hand sanitization. The machine can be rotated 360 degrees"
"It has been named as 'COVID-19 Smart Swab'. The robot at present has been designed as a semi-automatic machine. A fully-automated 'Smart Swab' can be designed if the government provides me assistance", he said.
"New research and inventions have very minimal scope in India." he lamented
"The government must therefore provide some financial aid to inventors and encourage them", he requested.