Meet Zafira, a humanoid robot that ensures COVID precautions at cloth stores in Tamil Nadu

A humanoid robot named 'Zafira' is being used at all textile stores of a company in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli to ensure that people adhere to COVID-19 safety guidelines.

The robot, dressed in saree monitors if people entering the store are wearing a mask, checks their temperature and dispenses sanitizer. She also keeps a track of the number of people entering the store at a time to prevent crowding.

Speaking about the robot’s features, Aashik Rahman, CEO Zafi Robots said, “We have developed robots ever since COVID-19 broke out and the lockdown was imposed, to help frontline workers. The robot has a complete intelligence system. It will also track the number of people entering the store, at a time and send details to owners via email, daily.”

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A similar robot dressed in a saree moving around a textile store in Tamil Nadu had caught the eyes of the visitors last month. The robot was used to detect the customers and provide them with hand sanitizers. The short clip shared on Twitter showed the robot moving around with a bottle of sanitizer and an LCD screen in hand.

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COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu on Wednesday saw 5,958 fresh coronavirus cases that pushed the tally close to the four-lakh mark while 118 deaths took the toll to 6,839.

Recoveries were 5,606 as the cumulative number of people cured rose to 3,38,060, a health department bulletin said. While the total infection count reached 3,97,261, active cases stood at 52,362, it said. The state tested 75,500 samples as the total specimens examined so far rose to 44,22,361.

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Meanwhile, the government said it has introduced a new SMS facility at the testing centre in the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital for receiving COVID-19 test results within 24 hours. On the SMS facility, state Health Minister C Vijaya Baskar said so far people, who undergo RT-PCR testing, had to visit the testing facility to collect the result.

The immediate availability of test results would also avoid mental agony of a long wait for patients, he said adding this facility would be expanded to other testing centres in a phased manner.

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