For many, the idea of needles is a serious evil, and in a time when vaccines are more important than ever, those feelings can make vaccination against COVID-19 very difficult.
Recently, the company, founded at University of Waterloo’s flagship tech startup incubator has announced the first robot which inject intramuscular injections. The robot is called Cobionix (Cobi for short) and does not require a needle to deliver that dose. Instead, it uses a high-pressure liquid jet that is not thicker than human hair to inject the vaccine contents into the tissue.
“Cobi is a versatile robotics platform that can be quickly deployed to complete tasks with 100% autonomy,” Cobionix co-founder and CEO Tim Lasswell said in a statement. “We used needleless injection technology and outfitted Cobi to demonstrate that patients can receive intramuscular injections such as vaccines without needles and without the involvement of medical professionals. “
Cobi has many advantages.
In the first place, it can be an effective way to take care of the shortage of health care workers. It is also a safer way to vaccinate people because it does not require human workers.
Cobi can scan your personal IDs to verify if they are correct. You can then proceed to find the best place for the vaccine on patient’s body.
However, Cobis skills are not limited to health care. The manufacturer says the robot can adapt to the cleaning technology and hospitality industry. With a few small tweaks and some coding changes, Cobi can become a whole new robot that performs a whole new set of tasks.
The real value of Cobi lies in the fact that it can be fully automated. Some robots work by carefully monitoring of people who control every movement of the machine.
However, Cobi is designed to be programmed to run on its own. This reduces the operating costs of the robot and may be useful for more applications.
Of course, the robot is not yet ready to go on the market. It can take another two years for Cobi to work completely autonomously, but manufacturers have high hopes for when this will finally happen.
