By Abraham Achirga
ABUJA, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Nigerian students have built a
machine they hope can one day help hospitals remotely treat
COVID-19 patients, taking temperatures, transporting medicine
and allowing medical workers to communicate with patients with a
webcam and screen.
The robot is a remote-controlled cabinet on wheels, decked
out with a vibrant, floral pattern and dubbed "MAIROBOT".
In a demonstration, a school nurse loaded MAIROBOT with
medicine and a student, using a controller and goggles to see
through a camera, trundled the machine through a corridor and
into a mock isolation room to scan a student's forehead for her
temperature.
"I hope this MAIROBOT can curb and reduce the risk that
these health personnel get - I want health workers to be safer,"
said Nabila Abbas, one of the robot's creators.
The robotics team at the Glisten International Academy in
Nigeria's capital Abuja started out trying to build MAIROBOT by
collaborating online, but eventually had to come together to
finish the project in their lab.
But MAIROBOT, which took about three months to build, is
still in its early days. During the demonstration, the isolation
room door had to be left open for it, and it can only carry
medication, so patients would self-administer while a nurse
watches over the camera.
"Right now we are working on upgrading it," said David
Adeniyi, the teacher overseeing the robotics team, who says the
students hope to make MAIROBOT commercially available one day.
For Abbas, the robot's use will not stop at the coronavirus.
"Other infectious diseases can also be curbed using MAIROBOT
like Ebola, Lassa fever and all these infectious viruses," she
said.