Design of an automated controller with collision-avoidance capability for in-vivo transportation of biological cells

Abstract

As the rapid development of precision medicine, in-vivo manipulation of micro/nano-scaled particles has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The collision is one of the main reasons that falls the in-vivo particle transportation fail. In this paper, we develop an in-vivo cell transportation control approach using a robotically controlled optical tweezers manipulation system, where a so-called wide-area image gradient algorithm is used to avoid collision of the transported cell with other obstacles. The controller exhibits advantages of the reduced online calculation for collision avoidance, fast response, high accuracy, as well as an ability to compensate the environmental disturbance caused by blood flow. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.