These refugees have built a Lego robot to fight COVID-19

The looming spectre of COVID-19 has brought life to a standstill in the Middle East’s largest refugee camp.

Living in close quarters and with basic health and sanitation facilities, residents of Jordan’s Za’atari settlement are worried about what will happen if the virus reaches them, according to the UNHCR.

The situation has inspired a group of Syrian refugees at the camp to get creative to help – by building a robotic hand sanitizer out of Lego.

The prototype

The idea is simple: help prevent the spread of COVID-19 with a cheap sanitizer dispenser that can easily be replicated. But to reduce transmission of the virus it has to operate without the need to touch a bottle.

Syrian refugees, trained in robotics at the Jubilee Center for Excellence in Education in Jordan, worked on the problem at the Innovation Lab in the giant Za’atari camp.

“The robot consists of simple Lego bricks, as well as the ‘brain’ and the sensor,” explains Marwan, a refugee who trains others in robotics at the camp. “You put your hand here, it signals that it gave you sanitizer, and that’s it.”

With a whir and a bow, the robot deposits sanitizer on the hand and returns to its upright position, saying “good job, thank you” as it finishes.

Making a difference

The machine has generated a great deal of interest. Even people with robotics experience have asked about its design and programming, Marwan says.

‘’We want to be part of the fight against coronavirus,’’ he continues, explaining that he and other displaced people want to help people both inside and outside the camp at a moment of global crisis.

To do this, they decided to make their design freely available for others to use. “We as refugees, as humans, must help and so we offered them this information and they then made more than one robot,” he says.

COVID and refugees

It was been announced that the coronavirus has reached the sprawling refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district of southern Bangladesh, home to roughly a million Rohingya refugees.

The consequences of large-scale transmission would be devastating, the UNHCR has warned. The UN agency says the world’s 71 million refugees and forcibly displaced people are among the most vulnerable to the virus; 134 refugee-hosting countries are currently reporting local transmission.

The UNHCR is trying to raise $745 million to help it deal with outbreaks of COVID-19 among refugees and displaced people around the world.