Cells are the smallest and functional units of all living organisms. Micromanipulation of biological cells has recently attracted considerable attention for its wide applications in biomedical fields. This talk will introduce our recent research in integration of robotics and optical tweezers technologies to achieve advanced manipulation and characterization of biological cells. Our research is carried out in the following key areas.

First, we develop a table-top bio-manipulation system with a highly sophisticated optical tweezers, which utilizes Holographic Optical Trapping technology to sculpt laser light into up to 200 independently controllable optical traps for positioning and moving particles ranged from 100nm to 100µm.

Second, we develop a cell mechanical model under optically induced mechanical cell stretching for cell property characterization, which can be used to improve medical applications such as identification of diseased (cancer) cells.

Third, we investigate cell trapping strategy by considering the dynamics of the trapped cell and incorporating environmental influence into the trapping force analysis, which helps us understand how the trapping force varies with the deviation of the trapped cell from the center of the trap and thus make appropriate motion planning in moving the cell.

Fourth, we extend the networked multi-agent path generation and control technologies to multi-cell transportation, for coordinating motions of multiple cells to avoid mutual collisions and transporting grouped cells while maintaining a required pattern.

Finally, working with experts in biological and clinical science, we apply the above manipulation technologies to bio-medical applications in property characterization of blood-derived cells, harvesting and sorting cells with green fluorescence from a group of cells, and studying behavior of chemotaxis and cell-to-cell communication through moving cells.