Trials have shown that tube picking has small tolerances for error, but where robots are taught manually, they can be taught to make mistakes
RTS Life Science's sample and compound stores have been the subject of a series of technological innovations in recent months.
The recent annual meeting of stores users held in Boston, MA, underlined how important investment in reliable and efficient compound storage is to RTS clients.
David Harding, business development manager, explained: "Their compound collections lie at the centre of their drug discovery and genomic research programmes and therefore they demand both simplicity of retrieval and storage format flexibility." Over the last few years, RTS has developed three high density compound storage solutions, providing robust, industrial quality solutions, scheduled by d-Sprint and tracked by Store Inventory System (SIS) software. Auto teach for the tube and vial picking robots is a feature that was incorporated some time ago.
However, recent installations have seen auto teach extended to the store robot and plate handling robot as well.
This is an important facility, because there can be thousands of different positions that the robots must be able to reach.
Trials have shown that tube picking has small tolerances for error, but where robots are taught manually, they can be taught to make mistakes.
Instances of error teaching understandably rise when the stores operate at temperatures of -20C.
Naturally, robot auto teach also has positive health and safety implications, as close contact with robots is avoided.
The robots take a few hours to learn the lay-out of the stores.
This technique considerably simplifies on-site commissioning, and allows rapid re-adjustment for contraction when stores are operated at reduced temperatures.
Owing to the very different research agendas of the stores' end users, genomics and pharmaceutical firms store compounds in a variety of different ways, involving bottles, vials and tubes, all in varying sizes. To cope with this, RTS's engineers have designed a three way robotic gripper which can handle the smaller size vessels, as well as the transport racks.
