Robot-based Environmental Monitoring in Automated Life Science Laboratories

Processes in classic life sciences laboratories are characterized by the handling of a wide variety of chemicals and solvents. Leaks or accidents when handling the samples and labware can result in the uncontrolled escape of these often harmful or explosive substances. The monitoring of the gas concentrations in the room air of the laboratories is therefore of particular importance. In this research paper, the integration and testing of two metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors are presented. The sensors have been combined with a low-cost IoT-based microcontroller in a small sensor node to transfer the collected sensors data from the sensor node to the IoT cloud which is responsible for data processing, storing, and monitoring. The sensor node was attached to a mobile robot. The sensor node was tested with six different volatile organic solvents (VOCs). Two gas leakage positions were used to evaluate the sensor’s performance in different leakage situations and distances. Five solvent volumes were investigated to differentiate the sensor’s response and to select the active detecting thresholds for triggering an alarm in case of a dangerous level of toxic/ hazardous gases level detected.