Autonomous Integration of Bench-Top Wet Lab Equipment

TL;DR

This paper presents a prototype system that automates small-scale laboratory equipment, specifically a bench-top centrifuge, using computer vision techniques to improve flexibility and reduce costs in lab automation.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel computer vision-based system for automating bench-top lab equipment, addressing the limitations of existing expensive and inflexible automation solutions.

Findings

Prototype successfully automates centrifuge operation

Computer vision accurately detects and localizes centrifuge buckets

Initial results demonstrate feasibility of small-scale lab automation

Abstract

Laboratory automation is an expensive and complicated endeavor with limited inflexible options for small-scale labs. We develop a prototype system for tending to a bench-top centrifuge using computer vision methods for color detection and circular Hough Transforms to detect and localize centrifuge buckets. Initial results show that the prototype is capable of automating the usage of regular bench-top lab equipment.