I’m in an open automation club for hobbyists and professionals working in biotech automation. The club holds monthly talks on matters of biotech automation. The central applications of this field are the integration of liquid handling robots and plate handling robots to create what are essentially highly independent, highly precise miniature factory robotics under tight environmental controls (see examples below)
And I’m here because it occurred to me that it’s like there’s some kind of spell cast: it seems like everyone working on ROS and everyone working on open-source lab automation have somehow just missed each other!
I’m excited to give a short talk and try to break down this invisible border, and I’d like to try and inform folks of any sort of biotech applications using ROS!
Does anyone know if any projects that are using ROS to interface laboratory instruments and plate handlers to move between them? As someone who works with these every day, ROS seems like such a promising solution to a very daunting set of problems! I’ve done a cursory search, but the few results are all several years old. Anyone know of active relevant projects?
There is uLab Kevin | United Robotics Group that I briefly did some tiny amount of work on. It’s a mobile plate handler that brings plates from one place to another, can store multiple on board.
OOf, it’s been a few years since I did that bit of work. This spun off from Fraunhofer IPA’s Care-o-bot efforts, as was one of the applications. The platform already used ROS 1 since it’s inception (started soon after the inception or ROS, IIRC).
I’m pretty sure a lot changed since I wrote that bit of code for it, haven’t been in touch and work for a different company these days.