Human-guided micro-manipulation of biological cells using optical tweezers

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a robotic control technique for human-guided micro-manipulation of biological cells using optical tweezers. In the proposed control technique, humans are able to interact with the optical tweezers system and guide the target cell to be manipulated toward a desired region, while ensuring collision avoidance with obstacles in the micro-world. While current approaches for cell manipulation can only perform either manual operations or preassigned automated tasks, this paper offers a new control technique that allows humans to interact with an automated optical tweezers system to deal with complex manipulation tasks or unexpected events. A single controller with smooth switching between different manipulation tasks is derived to improve the reliability and performance of the control system. Lyapunov-like method is utilized for stability analysis of the control system, and experiments are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control technique for human-guided manipulation of cells using optical tweezers.