Hardware and Software manual for Evolution of Oil Droplets in a Chemo-Robotic Platform

TL;DR

This paper presents a fully automated robotic platform that creates, observes, and analyzes chemical oil droplets to facilitate physical evolution studies, integrating hardware and software components based on a 3D printer system.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated system combining hardware and software for physical evolution experiments with chemical oil droplets, enabling precise control and analysis.

Findings

Automated droplet creation and placement using a modified 3D printer.

Real-time image recognition for droplet behavior analysis.

Open access platform supporting evolution research in chemical systems.

Abstract

This manual outlines a fully automated liquid handling robot to enable physically-embodied evolution within a chemical oil-droplet system. The robot is based upon the REPRAP3D printer system and makes the droplets by mixing chemicals and then placing them in a petri dish after which they are recorded using a camera and the behaviour of the droplets analysed using image recognition software. This manual accompanies the open access publication published in Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6571.