Team:Alberta/Project/Automation
From 2009.igem.org
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The physical design of the robot was probably the most challenging and time consuming parts of the whole process. This was mainly owing to the fact that the plastic construction pieces and only lengths and sizes of the different types of pieces. Also a problem was the amount of 'flex' or 'wiggle' that you could get out of the plastic parts. This led to a few failed implementations that had to be completely disassembled and started again. The current physical implementation owes its inspiration to Hans Andersons sudoku solving robot (http://tiltedtwister.com/sudokusolver.html). This adapted design allowed for the necessary amount of precision for 'pen' to be positioned over the well, along with the advantage of not possessing a large number ot points where the play in the gears and joints would become a problem. | The physical design of the robot was probably the most challenging and time consuming parts of the whole process. This was mainly owing to the fact that the plastic construction pieces and only lengths and sizes of the different types of pieces. Also a problem was the amount of 'flex' or 'wiggle' that you could get out of the plastic parts. This led to a few failed implementations that had to be completely disassembled and started again. The current physical implementation owes its inspiration to Hans Andersons sudoku solving robot (http://tiltedtwister.com/sudokusolver.html). This adapted design allowed for the necessary amount of precision for 'pen' to be positioned over the well, along with the advantage of not possessing a large number ot points where the play in the gears and joints would become a problem. | ||
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Revision as of 19:42, 19 September 2009
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DIY AutomationOne of the main themes of this project, as well as iGEM in general, is that simplification of both parts and processes provided by the synthetic biology movement are capable of bringing relatively advanced biological techniques 'to the masses'. With one of the DNA assembly techinques that have been developed during the course of the summer, the goal was to speed up and simplify a very time consuming process. The hope is that it would be simple enough to be used by high school students. Better yet, a trained monkey. Even better still, a simple robotic device, thereby leaving the both the original lab technician, the high school student, and the trained monkey more time for beer, which leads to the situation where a lab techician, high school student and monkey all walk into the bar (cliche, I know). |
The Robotic DeviceSo about this robotic device. Since the DNA assembly method consists mainly of a few repeated and simple actions, interspersed with relatively long wait periods, it seemed like a good canidate for a little bit of automation. This little automaton is built entirely out of a popular plastic construction set, using the only the standard pieces and hardware.
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Hardware and Software
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Getting to a Working Prototype
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Future Work
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