Researchers Automate Lab Drudgery with the 3D-Printable FLUID Robot — and Release the Design to All

Researchers from Hokkaido University have designed a robot assistant for automating material synthesis work, built using off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts — and are making the design available as open hardware.

"By adopting open source, utilizing a 3D printer, and taking advantage of commonly-available electronics," explains lead author Mikael Kuwahara of the team's work, "it became possible to construct a functional robot that is customized to a particular set of needs at a fraction of the costs typically associated with commercially-available robots."

The robot created by the team is dubbed "FLUID," the Flowing Liquid Utilizing Interactive Device. It's designed to automate the creation of binary materials through the precipitation of cobalt and nickel — a laborious process if done manually, but one that the robot can handle on its own with ease.

The machine's four modules feature a syringe, two valves, a servo motor, and a stepper motor plus end-stop sensor, all connected to Arduino Mega microcontrollers that can fill and empty the syringes with precision. Future models, the researchers explain, may include additional sensors for monitor temperature and pH levels and the ability to handle a wider variety of chemical reactions. All hardware is either off-the-shelf or 3D printed at a low cost.

Meanwhile, the current version is to be made available under an open hardware license with open source software to support its use — part, the researchers explain, of a mission to lower the barrier to entry for this kind of lab automation.

"This approach aims to democratize automation in material synthesis," says project lead Keisuke Takahashi, professor at the University's faculty of science, "providing researchers with a practical, cost-effective solution to accelerate innovation in materials science."

The team's work has been published in the journal ACS Applied Engineering Materials under closed access terms, with instructions on building the device available in the paper's supplement under open-access terms; the 3D print files have been published to GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3, with the firmware source code in a separate repository under the same license.