A switching controller for high speed cell transportation by using a robot-aided optical tweezers system

Rapid and efficient cell manipulation is critical to many cellular operations at the single-cell resolution. In this paper, we propose a new approach for high speed manipulation of a single suspended cell using a robot-aided optical tweezers cell manipulation system. A switching geometrical model for achieving automatic cell trapping, maintenance of optical trapping, and obstacle avoidance is developed based on an objective of confining the trapped cell inside the high speed transfer region, which can help attain high speed cell transportation velocity. With the switching geometrical model, a controller for high speed cell transportation is proposed to transfer the target cell to the destination efficiently. Experiments of manipulating human leukemia cancer NB-4 cells to the specific testing area for property characterization are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.