Kinodynamic planning and tracking control of biological cell formation with optical tweezers

Biological cell transportation with optical tweezers attracts increasing attention in biomedicine and cell engineering. This paper presents an efficient approach to the transportation of multiple cells into desired formation in complex microenvironments. To prevent from collision with other particles, a sampling-based tree planner is designed to generate a valid trajectory which is tracked by the optically trapped multi-cell formation. In addition, the leader-follower framework is utilized to generate the desired positions and velocities of the cells in formation at each sampling time, and the synchronization control method is used to ensure that the multiple cells maintain the formation constraints during the motion. The dynamics of the optically trapped cells is also considered in the controller design. In this way, the cells can be manipulated to form formations efficiently and safely. Simulations of manipulating optical trapped cells into formation are finally performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2013 IEEE.