System to Track Samples in Liquid Nitrogen Environment

今天，在液氮冷冻室中跟踪样品主要有两种方法，手动方法和机器人方法 系统。到目前为止，人工跟踪是最常见的方法，但它容易出现人为错误，因为 样品可能放错地方，条目可能不准确，样品可以在没有添加的情况下移动、移除或添加 准确更新数据库。 另一方面，机器人冰柜保存着准确的记录，但它们(A)非常昂贵，(B)它们的 由于机器人技术，运力大幅下降。 这个SBIR快速通道提案的目标是开发一个系统的功能原型，该系统将允许实时 在液氮冷冻室里追踪盒子。它将在甚至不打开冰箱的情况下执行库存。它 将引导用户到所需的样本框进行检索，并提醒他们错误(以及如何更正 当它们发生时。 当与我们的液氮温度盒映射器一起使用时，来自多个冰柜的冷链保管链 可以对单个样品瓶进行维护和记录。 这个系统将以大约10%的价格提供机器人系统的许多好处，而且不需要 牺牲所有的冷藏室空间。 该系统将在单台冷冻机之间占据非常大的市场份额 一方面是手写笔记本和Excel电子表格，另一方面是昂贵的机器人冰柜系统 其他的。 与具有挑战性的液氮环境和相关低成本兼容的新电子产品 需要开发级别的软件，但可以开发系统的其他元素，如用户界面 改编自BioTillion的现有产品。为了降低风险，我们已经确定并测试了个人 工作温度为-196°C的电子元件 第一阶段的目标将是设计、制造和测试(A)所需的电子设计原型 可在-196°C下读取RFID盒标签，以及(B)可在液氮温度下读取的RFID标签。 第二阶段的目标将是使用第一阶段的结果来开发我们系统的全功能原型 它将在液氮冷冻机中运行。

Today, there are primarily two ways to track samples in a liquid nitrogen freezer, manual methods and robotic systems. Manual tracking is by far the most common method today but it is prone to human error since samples can be misplaced, entries can be inaccurate, samples can be moved, removed, or added without accurately updating the database. Robotic freezers, on the other hand, keep accurate records but they (a) are very expensive, and (b) their capacity is significantly reduced due to the robotics. The goal of this SBIR fast-track proposal, is to develop a functional prototype of a system that will allow real-time box tracking in a liquid nitrogen freezer. It will perform inventories without even opening the freezer. It will guide the users to the desired sample boxes for retrieval and alert them to errors (and how to correct them) when they occur. When used with our liquid nitrogen temperature box mapper a cold chain of custody from multiple freezers down to individual sample vials can be maintained and documented. This system will afford many of the benefits of a robotic system at about 10% of the price and without sacrificing any freezer space at all. This system will capture the very large segment of the market between single freezers with handwritten notebooks and Excel spreadsheets on the one hand, and expensive robotic freezer systems on the other. New electronics that is compatible with the challenging liquid nitrogen environment and the associated low level software will need to be developed but other elements of the system such as the user interface can be adapted from BioTillion‘s existing products. To mitigate risk, we have already identified and tested individual electronics components that function at -196 °C. The goal of the Phase I will be to design, fabricate and test (a) prototypes of the electronic designs needed to read RFID box tags at -196 °C and (b) RFID tagged labels that can be read at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The goal of the Phase II will be to use the Phase I results to develop a fully functional prototype of our system that will operate in a liquid nitrogen freezer.