Open-source personal pipetting robots with live-cell incubation and microscopy compatibility

Dettinger, Philip; Kull, Tobías; Arekatla, Geethika; Ahmed, Nouraiz; Zhang, Yang; Schneiter, Florin; Wehling, Arne; Schirmacher, Daniel; Kawamura, Shunsuke; Loeffler, Dirk; Schroeder, Timm

doi:10.1101/2021.07.04.448641

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Other automated platforms are currently available, and they may incorporate biosafety cabinets and incubators as well (Crombie et al, 2017). Less expensive pipetting robots, for academic settings, have also been developed (Dettinger et al, 2022) and they can be used, without prior knowledge, to automate many experimental procedures in standard cell culture vessels. These studies are extremely important as stem cells hold enormous promise for fundamental biological studies and as well as for cell-based therapies.…”

Section: Macroscale Cell Culture Traditional Culture and Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culturing cells for life: innovative approaches in macroscopic and microfluidic cultures, with an emphasis on stem cells

Badilescu,

Parimalam,

Packirisamy

2023

Front. Nanotechnol.

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In 2006, Whitesides, writing about microfluidics, said that microfluidics is in early adolescence and it is not yet clear how it will develop. Today, almost 20 years later, microfluidics became a fully developed, highly sophisticated, multidisciplinary field that had entirely honoured its early promise. Its strength stems from the knowledge and know-how, coming from multiple disciplines such as physics of fluids, engineering, and microfabrication in the beginning, followed, more recently, by cell biological research, in full bloom nowadays. In microfluidic devices, the environment of cells such as chemical and mechanical gradients can be reproduced, making biological studies even more compelling. The red thread of this review paper follows the new insights and discoveries in both traditional macro- and microfluidic cell culture brought into the cell biology field, especially in the culture of stem cells, filled with promise in the field of regenerative medicine. Microfluidic devices provide an environment that is much closer to that of in vivo cell culture than the conventional culture platforms, where large amounts of cells are cultured and the environment of individual cells cannot be distinguished. The convenience of live cell imaging, portability, and the integration of sensors to precisely, control various parameters, has expanded cell biologists’ arsenal In addition, microfluidic devices, integrated with different functionalities, that is, the automated cell culture systems, will be discussed as well.

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Section: Macroscale Cell Culture Traditional Culture and Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culturing cells for life: innovative approaches in macroscopic and microfluidic cultures, with an emphasis on stem cells

Badilescu,

Parimalam,

Packirisamy

2023

Front. Nanotechnol.

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“…Gervasi et al [18] carefully discussed the design of an electronic syringe head for micropumping. Dettigner et al [19] developed a 5-bar parallel robot for pipetting multi-well plates. The robot used fixed needles as the dispensing head.…”

Section: A Laboratory Automation and Robotic Pipettingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating a Manual Pipette into a Collaborative Robot Manipulator for Flexible Liquid Dispensing

Zhang¹,

Wan²,

Tanaka³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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This paper presents a system integration approach for a 6-DoF (Degree of Freedom) collaborative robot to operate a pipette for liquid dispensing. Its technical development is threefold. First, we designed an end-effector for holding and triggering manual pipettes. Second, we took advantage of a collaborative robot to recognize labware poses and planned robotic motion based on the recognized poses. Third, we developed vision-based classifiers to predict and correct positioning errors and thus precisely attached pipettes to disposable tips. Through experiments and analysis, we confirmed that the developed system, especially the planning and visual recognition methods, could help secure high-precision and flexible liquid dispensing. The developed system is suitable for low-frequency, high-repetition biochemical liquid dispensing tasks. We expect it to promote the deployment of collaborative robots for laboratory automation and thus improve the experimental efficiency without significantly customizing a laboratory environment.Note to Practitioners-The system presented in the paper helps to promote low-frequency, high-repetition biochemical experiments. Such experiments were difficult to be performed automatically. For one thing, they are temporal. It is undesirable to spare limited lab space for special-purpose machines. For the other, such experiments require a repeated operation. Employing humans to carry out the experiments is difficult. The integrated robotic manipulator presented in this paper solves the problem using a vertical articulated robot. With the support of the proposed planning and error correction methods, the robot can be placed in narrow lab space and set up quickly for lowfrequency, high-repetition experiments. Also, it may be set up together with existing automation devices for simultaneous liquid dispensing and examination. Interested practitioners may find an example of the robot working with a plant phenotyping system for screening chemicals in the supplementary video.

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“…It is important to consider that "Automated Liquid Handling" does provide a substantial number of articles that utilize a device that is able to move liquids between locations to some extent, but there are also some very niche applications where de novo construction of equipment was demonstrated, and the equipment was employed to conduct specific tasks. Such examples include the construction of open-source robots for liquid movement for microscopy applications [16], 3D printed robots for liquid manipulation and controlled using the Internet of Things [17,18], or the application of liquid handling in microdevices [19,20], as well as research that was not directly related to bioscience laboratories. Nevertheless, even this initial comparison based on the literature survey that was conducted, was sufficient to demonstrate that the utilisation of automation in biosciences is still at its infancy, with a huge potential as more research laboratories realise the evident advantages of working with such platforms.…”

Section: Use Of Lhd In Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Automated liquid-handling operations for robust, resilient, and efficient bio-based laboratory practices

Torres‐Acosta

Lye

Dikicioglu

2022

Preprint

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Increase in the adoption of liquid handling devices (LHD) can facilitate experimental activities. Initially adopted by businesses and industry-based laboratories, the practice has also moved to academic environments, where a wide range of non-standard/non-typical experiments can be performed. Current protocols or laboratory analyses require researchers to transfer liquids for the purpose of dilution, mixing, or inoculation, among other operations. LHD can render laboratories more efficient by performing more experiments per unit of time, by making operations robust and resilient against external factors and unforeseen events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and by remote operation. The present work reviews literature that reported the adoption and utilisation of LHD available in the market and presents examples of their practical use. Applications demonstrate the critical role of automation in research development and its ability to reduce human intervention in the experimental workflow. Ultimately, this work will provide guidance to academic researchers to determine which LHD can fulfil their needs and how to exploit their use in both conventional and non-conventional applications. Furthermore, the breadth of applications and the scarcity of academic institutions involved in research and development that utilise these devices highlights an important area of opportunity for shift in technology to maximize research outcomes.

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Open-source personal pipetting robots with live-cell incubation and microscopy compatibility

Cited by 5 publications

References 55 publications

Culturing cells for life: innovative approaches in macroscopic and microfluidic cultures, with an emphasis on stem cells

Culturing cells for life: innovative approaches in macroscopic and microfluidic cultures, with an emphasis on stem cells

Integrating a Manual Pipette into a Collaborative Robot Manipulator for Flexible Liquid Dispensing

Automated liquid-handling operations for robust, resilient, and efficient bio-based laboratory practices

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