Beschreibung
Analysis of automated colony pickers and interviews with researchers showed that there is a market gap for cost-effective and desktop-sized colony separation systems. Triggered by this open niche, a portable desktop colony picker that separates colonies from petri dishes to microtiter plates was developed. The footprint of the system is as small as a 19''-rack, making it portable for frequent relocation across research facilities and in field research. Currently, a prototype is in progress. It hosts a camera-based control system and a robot for colony separation. The camera takes an image of the petri dish and interactive image processing supports the researcher to select the colonies to be separated.The robot is a miniaturized parallel kinematic, customized to the particular requirements. Electric sterilization, using the ohmic resistance to heat the needle tip, has been developed and confirmed in experiments. This technology has been miniaturized, integrated into a multi-needle revolver, and mounted to the robot head. Due to its unique design, neither cleaning fluid nor additional actuators, nor external heating is required. This publication covers the concept and the prototype, the robot, the sterilization technology, the multi-needle revolver head, and the camera-based control system.
