![]() ![]() When the opportunity to apply to the Igus 2018 North American Low Cost Robotics Innovation Competition arose, I jumped at the chance to demonstrate how low cost robotics could move out of the workcells and onto the lab bench. Outside of our automated workcells, there are still tasks that humans must perform due to their complexity or issues with device interoperability. At Transcriptic, we augment our custom-built biology workcells with low cost robotics and build low level communication to enable LCR to deeply integrate with our software infrastructure. ![]() Due to its modularity, when requirements change, these systems can be upgraded for low marginal cost to enable new functionality. Low cost robotics utilizes common, modular components to create automated systems that are suited to the task at hand for minimal unnecessary expense. By sharing our capabilities with cloud-connected users in a cost-effective way, we democratize the productivity and reproducibility gains that come from automating complex scientific tasks without the need to spend millions of dollars on equipment, allowing researchers to pay only for what they use. According to Canine, there are more than 50 OpenTrons robots already in operation in private labs and academic institutions since launching.Low cost robotics (LCR) is a rapidly growing field that regularly augments our work at Transcriptic. OpenTrons first launched out of Haxclr8tr in China and ran a successful Kickstarter in 2014 to help build a machine that could insert DNA inside of E. “So just like you’d deploy your lab software to Amazon Web Services you’d use an OpenTrons to send samples to a Transcriptic cloud lab.” “One of the biggest bottlenecks for labs, including outsourced labs like Transcriptic, is getting the samples out of the lab into their facility,” Canine said. ![]() “We’re the PC and they’re the cloud,” he said. But Canine sees that company as more of a partner than a competitor. It’s a similar idea to another YC startup Transcriptic, which is a cloud-based biotech lab in Palo Alto that tests for experimental drugs using robots. “These are the people we are building a tool for in the future,” he said. In other words, his $3,000 machine is controlled by your web browser and allows researchers to download protocols from the cloud to run experiments without the need for an engineer to create the code first.Ĭanine rattled off several use cases for OpenTrons, such as a farmer who wants to engineer crops or scientists developing a new super material in their garage. These older, more expensive machines require engineers to run them on the backend, but Canine says OpenTrons is “democratizing the tools” that allow for sharing protocols. He believes his machine is more like an actual PC. We’re a $3,000 robot,” OpenTrons co-founder Will Canine explained to TechCrunch.Ĭanine refers to these more expensive machines as ‘mainframe’ machines – or computers that existed before the PC came about. “Basically, if you’re a biologist you spend all of your time moving tiny amounts of liquid around from vial to vial by hand with a little micro-pipette or you have a $100,000 robot that does it for you. This can be a tedious process that OpenTrons hopes to diminish by using robotics and software to complete it. Most life science research is still done by hand. Robotics startup OpenTrons has come up with a way it believes will make wet lab experiments faster and cheaper – automation. ![]()
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