Design of Automated Desktop Seed Dispensing Robot for Bio-Laboratories

An automated seed dispensing robot is a useful tool to save time with manual work in bio-laboratories for more efficiency, but it is not yet popular because of the cost and the fact that some of the functions are complex and redundant. In order to address these issues, the paper presents the design of an automated handling robot to dispense seeds in the bio-laboratory based on a modified 3D printer frame with an additional axis and sensors. The robot was equipped with additional sensors and functionalities for control and monitoring. Seeds are picked up and dropped accurately by a vacuum tool mounted on the mobile carriage of the robot's frame. The pick-up process is guided by a seed detector sensor. Moreover, an additional needle length sensor combines with the distance sensor to detect the released distance for an accurate position. In the experiments, we investigate runtimes, the archive accuracy and describe the modular design of the robot to show that the prototype is well sufficient to distribute accurately small seeds to the dish. © 2020 IEEE.