Robot with pipette
Lab robot aBioBot based on 3D printer pushes science forward
3Dtoday based on 3Ders: 3D printer helps create aBioBot, an open source pipetting robot designed to speed up science
A team of designers, scientists and engineers has created a robotic device based on a modified 3D printer to automate and simplify laboratory research. The goal of aBioBot is to save the energy and resources of scientists and direct them to make great scientific discoveries.
If life were like in the movies, the police would solve crimes in a few minutes, cross-country travel would take a couple of moments, and scientific discoveries would follow one after another. However, reality forces us to be patient. For example, science cannot exist without boring and unhurried laboratory methods that not only annoy, but also hinder its development.
According to the young biotech company aBioBot from San Francisco, such methods include dropping from a pipette, when liquid chemicals, drugs and biological material are scrupulously measured and transferred to the right place using small vacuum pipettes.
Yes, it is simply impossible to do without this method during experiments, but it is "slow, boring and can even cause damage from constant muscle tension." It is clearly not worth wasting precious knowledge and time of learned minds on it.
How to find a way out of this situation? Very simple. If we develop a smart automated system for pipetting, it will be possible to direct all the attention of scientists in the right direction. It is enough to assemble a modified 3D printer and add open source software to it.
"We have created an adaptable and easy–to-manage automated laboratory assistant that will help scientists stay scientists," says Dr. Raghu Mahirayu, Founder, CEO and chief developer of aBioBot software.
Mahirayu is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Ohio State University. He is also engaged in the field of bioinformatics and cancer research, i.e. he himself sat for many hours with a pipette over his test tubes and worried more than once when the experiment turned out to be a failure. Add to this his passion for new technologies, in particular 3D printing, and you will understand how the idea of creating aBioBot came to his mind.
As the creators of aBioBot say, no one knows how to do monotonous work better than robots, for example, washing dishes or vacuuming carpets, so why not let them do what they do best? Although aBioBot was not the first company to try to automate laboratory research, its robot turned out to be unique due to the fact that it can "feel". Unlike other robots working with pipettes and liquids, aBioBot is able to "see" and react to the situation thanks to Yan, a machine vision system.
"Yan is machine vision, thanks to which aBioBot monitors the course of the experiment instead of you," the company's employees explain. Modern sensors monitor all the actions of the device and immediately notice if something has spilled past or interferes with work. As a result, the robot's work becomes not only more efficient, but also safer and less error-prone.
Another distinctive feature of aBioBot is LabBench, a web browser interface that further facilitates the pipetting process. LabBench helps to compile protocols, monitors progress and automatically transfers all data to LabCloud.
At the moment, aBioBot has managed to install its PPI on three different hardware platforms based on a 3D printer. "Since the work of aBioBot is based on open source hardware and software, Lab Bench and Yan will be available to everyone through open PPI," the creators of the robot claim.
Now the company is actively cooperating with volunteers who help to find errors in the work and improve the design of the aBioBot prototype. aBioBot was founded by the IndieBio business incubator in early 2015. Now, together with Mahirayu, hardware engineer Ken Rinaldo, biologist Kun Huang, programmer Haitania Kulkarni and designer Trad Mark Gunderson are working in it.
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19.05.2016