Design of an Automated System for Imaging and Sorting Soil Mesofauna

Abstract

Identification and population counts of soil mesofauna can be an important tool for soil ecologists to determine soil biodiversity. The process of performing population counts, which includes classifying and sorting specimens, is very time consuming because of the large diversity and quantities of specimens in soil samples. A mechanical system was designed and developed to automate this process. The system featured automated imaging, positioning, and sorting. Images acquired with system were used by pattern recognition software to classify individual specimens from a soil sample. Positioning was a required function of the system for automation and was accomplished using a pair of linear stages mounted orthogonally to each other. The system also featured a six-axis robot attached with a pipette end effector for sorting classified specimens, a required function for validation. The final system was successful in creating high-quality images of 19 species of soil mesofauna and sorting them.