Articles

Visually-guided protein crystal manipulation using micromachined silicon tools

Georgiev, Atanas; Allen, Peter K.; Edstrom, William

We present a system for protein crystal micro-manipulation with focus on automated crystal mounting for the purposes of X-ray data collection. The system features a set of newly designed micropositioner end-effectors we call microshovels which address some limitations of the traditional cryogenic loops. We have used micro-electrical mechanical system (MEMS) techniques to design and manufacture various shapes and quantities of microshovels. Visual feedback from a camera mounted on the microscope is used to control the micropositioner as it lowers a microshovel into the liquid containing the crystals and approaches a selected crystal for pickup. We present experimental results that illustrate the applicability of our approach.

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Title
2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 28 September - 2 October, 2004, Sendai, Japan: proceedings
Publisher
IEEE
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2004.1389358

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Academic Units
Computer Science
Published Here
November 5, 2012