Team:Alberta/Project/Automation
From 2009.igem.org
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- | One of the main themes of this project, as well as iGEM in general, is the simplification of both | + | One 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 relatively advanced biological techniques 'to the masses'. |
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- | + | With one of the DNA assembly techniques 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 technician, high school student and monkey all walk into the bar (cliche, I know). | |
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- | + | So 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 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. | |
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- | < | + | <h4>Why use a 'toy'?</h4> |
- | + | So why would you want to use something not too far from a toy to build such a device, when there are so many other resources available? The construction set was chosen because of the reality that not everybody has access to a machine shop, PCB manufacturing equipment, and a micro-controller programmer. These things are usually pretty expensive too, which would probably preclude large chunks of people from being able partake in such robotic delight. The hope was that by using things that are relatively inexpensive, and readily available parts, places like high-schools etc would be able to make use of this. | |
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- | + | Since the idea was to only parts that came with the construction kit, the problem was a lot like on the Apollo 13 movie, where the engineer comes into the room with a big box of stuff and says something to the effect of, "We have to solve our problem using nothing but this." So the hardware for the robot consists of pieces from the construction kit. Also used was some electrical tape, some small rare earth magnets, and a pipette tip. Oh, and a thin bolt that I found underneath my desk. Ok, scratch that, I didn't really end up using the bolt, I substituted more tape. | |
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+ | The easiest and perhaps only way of accomplishing the automation of the DNA assembly protocol using only the parts in the kit was to move the beads from one well to another, where the wells had previously been filled with the correct DNA pieces, washes, etc. The other option would have been to hold the beads in one place, and move the liqiud in and out of a single tube, as had been done by the experiments that are currently performing the protocol. Dispensing liquids via a pipette or other means was deemed to be difficult to do using only the 3 motors provided in the kit. A sort of 'dip pen' method was settled on, where the beads would be attracted to a 'pen' placed in one well, the lifted up and placed in another well, where they would be shaken off and allowed to sit in the solution. | ||
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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 of points where the play in the gears and joints would become a problem. | ||
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Revision as of 22:47, 21 October 2009
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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 relatively advanced biological techniques 'to the masses'. With one of the DNA assembly techniques 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 technician, 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 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.
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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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