Application of dual-arm robot in biomedical analysis: Sample preparation and transport

Abstract

The use of automated systems in life science laboratories is rising in recent years. Robots play a vital role in laboratory procedures, ranging from chemical analysis to drug development. In high degrees of automation situations, such as transferring plates, adding covers to the plates or transferring bulk liquids, single-arm robots with multiple degrees of freedom are used. Recently, dual-arm robots also draw much attraction due to their flexibility. However, applications of dual-arm robot in life science are still limited. In this paper a dual-arm robot platform, designed for sample preparation and transport in life science, is introduced. As programming for dual-arm robots is more challenging than single-arm robots, especially in life science automation, an efficient and flexible programming method is also discussed. Besides, a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) instrument is also integrated into this platform, which is automatically fed with the samples on 96-well microtiter plates using the robot. A fully automated sample preparation method with subsequent mass spectrometric measurements for fast enantiomeric excess determination of chiral compounds was implemented and applied to the dual-arm robot platform.