Team:Alberta/Project/Automation
From 2009.igem.org
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DIY AutomationOne of the main themes of this project, as well as iGEM in general, is that the simplification of both parts and processes provided by the synthetic biology movement are capable of bringing fairly advanced biological techniques 'to the masses'. With one of the DNA assembly techniques that have been developed during the course of the project, the goal was to speed up and simplify a very time consuming process. The hope was that it would be simple enough to be used by high school students. Better yet, a trained monkey. Even better still, a simple inexpensive 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 technician, high school student and monkey all walk into the bar (cliche, I know). |
The Robotic DeviceSince the DNA assembly method consists mainly of a few repeated and simple actions, interspersed with relatively long idle periods, it seemed like a good candidate 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. The firmware has been somewhat customised, however.
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Hardware and Software
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Getting to a Working Prototype
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Results
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Future Work
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In the event that you want to build it yourself...
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