On Feb 12th, 2020, the 19th day of Keenon Robotics’ involvement in Covid-19, meal delivery robots were deployed into the mobile hospital in Wuhan.
On the night of Jan 24, Singapore-Hangzhou flight TR188 landed on Hangzhou International Airport. Among the 335 passengers on board, 116 were Wuhan guests and the remaining 219 passengers had to be quarantined at the Hangzhou Providence Regional Medical Center. However, there were issues with limited manpower due to the Chinese New Year holidays and the risk of infection when delivering daily meals. Upon receiving the news, Keenon Robotics quickly formed an emergency technical team, flew the team to Hangzhou, and deployed 18 meal delivery robots since the start of the Chinese New Year.
According to sources, since the launch of Keenon Robotics project in “assisting infected areas with smart tools”, the robots have been deployed in hospitals and quarantine zones in more than 40 cities including Hubei, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan, Hunan, Jiangsu, Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Xi’an, and other places. Following that, large numbers of meal delivery robots arrived at various Wuhan hospitals, where they can be assembled and activated within two days.
The use of automated deliveries has long been introduced before the epidemic. Meal-delivery robots are pervasive in popular F&B restaurant chains such as Haidilao and Xinbailu, which improves the efficiency of their manpower. Today, these robots are relieving the stress of medical staff in hospitals and protect the frontline staff from infection. By expanding the smart services industry as such, China can win the battle of this epidemic in the ‘smart’ way.
Editor’s note: This is part of our ongoing Tech for Good series, highlighting how Chinese tech companies are helping fight the impact of the coronavirus. This was originally written by Chen Xiao, a writer for our sister site, TechNode Chinese. Read the Chinese version here.