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Detecting Gripping Failure in a Liquid Handling Robot with a Break Beam Sensor

The importance of comprehensive automation in biotechnological and pharmaceutical laboratories is gaining more and more importance. Liquid handler robots have been present in these facilities for a long time. New technologies and approaches, such as individual in-house solutions utilizing low-cost hardware and open-source software to implement Internet-of-Things concepts, are opening up new possibilities in extending functionality flexibly. In this paper, a concept is presented for the detection of potential gripping failures in a liquid handler robot with an infrared break beam sensor. During the problematic step, the robot has to pick up an object from a container rack, while the rack should stay at its original position. In the error scenario, the rack gets stuck to the first object in a position in a way, that its presence can be detected by the sensor after moving the arm to a specified position. As an interface between the robot’s control system and the sensor, an Arduino microcontroller was used, for which a client application was developed. This application can be executed from a liquid handling script and it communicates with the microcontroller through a serial port. The resulting extension provides an automated solution for a checking step that previously required the process to stop and a human to visually inspect the robot.