Application of a dual arm robot for automated sample preparation for cholesterol determination in biliary stent incrustations

Automation and robotics are increasingly being used in the field of life science due to its various advantages such as minimizing human effort, efficient utilization of time, standardization of processes and low rates of contamination. Dual arm robots, with their multiple degrees of freedom and increased flexibility, allow them to be used for a wide number of applications making it possible to automate complicated tasks such as pipetting or handling of multiple labware simultaneously. The Yaskawa CSDA10F dual arm robot was used to automate a sample preparation process for measuring cholesterol present in bile samples. The robot prepared calibration samples with four different concentrations and multiple identical samples with a known concentration in order to test the repeatability and accuracy of the automated method. Prepared samples were fed to the gas chromatography module where they were analyzed and cholesterol levels were measured. This paper gives an overview of the robotic system and describes the automated sample preparation process in detail. Comparative analysis of the measurements between samples prepared manually and those prepared robotically are also included, thus validating the method.