Micro-Scale Biological Process Automation: Modelling, Sensing and Control

在过去的十年里，人们对发展先进的细胞外科技术越来越感兴趣。生物医学研究和医学界对使用这种技术处理细胞和胚胎的需求越来越大，这给实验室带来了压力，要求他们提高这一过程的吞吐量和成功率。目前，这些过程由训练有素的技术人员手动进行。为了满足日益增长的需求，必须开发这些任务自动化的最先进技术。 我们以前在机器人和自动化领域的经验应用于大规模制造，以及我们在生物工程方面的发展，在过去的6-7年中，涉及单细胞胚胎的注射，细胞注射中注射力的控制，细胞注射的视觉伺服控制，以及3D MEMS装配自动化，使我们能够独特地研究微尺度生物技术任务的自动化。在本提案中，我们将研究微尺度细胞处理技术自动化所需的以下挑战。

The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in the development of advanced techniques for what is now referred to single as cell surgery. An increasing demand for processing of cells and embryos using this technique, from both the biomedical research and medical communities, is placing pressure on labs carrying out his work to increase both the throughput and success rate of this process. Currently, these processes are carried out manually by highly trained technicians. To meet increasing demand, advances in the state-of-the-art of the automation of these tasks must be developed. Our previous experience in the robotics and automation field applied to large scale manufacturing, and developments we have made in bioengineering in the last 6-7 years, involving injection of single cell embryos, control of injection forces in the cell injection, visual servo control for cell injection, and 3D MEMS assembly automation has uniquely positioned us to investigate the automation of micro-scale biotechnology tasks. In this proposal, we will investigate the following challenges required in micro-scale cell processing technology automation.