Development of Flexible Laboratory Automation Platform using Mobile Agents in the Clinical Laboratory Byung June Choi 1 , Sung Moon Jin 1 , Seung Hoon Shin 1 , Ja Choon Koo 1 , Sung Moo Ryew 2 , Min Cheol Kim 3 , JinHyun Kim 4 , Woong Hee Son 5 , Ki Tak Ahn 6 , Wankyun Chung 7 and Hyouk Ryeol Choi *1 Abstract— Recently, robotic automation in clinical laboratory becomes of keen interest as a fusion of bio and robotic technol- ogy. In this paper, we present a new robotic platform for clinical tests suitable for small or medium sized laboratories using mobile robots. The mobile robot called Mobile Agent is designed as transfer system of blood samples, reagents, microplates, and other instruments. Also, the mobile agent can perform diverse tests simultaneously based on its cooperative and distributed ability. The driving circuits for the mobile agent are embedded in the robot, and each mobile agent communicates with other agents by using Bluetooth communication. The RFID system is used to recognize patient information. The BioRobot platform based on mobile agents can control throughput according to the amount of tests. Also, the operation and maintenance of the system can be improved because its components are easily replaceable. To evaluate feasibility for BioRobot platform, the system was manufactured and validated by preliminary experiments. I. INTRODUCTION Recently, automated machines have been used to carry out most of the laboratory works, so the need for robotic automation in the clinical laboratory has been growing rapidly. However, the Total Laboratory Automation(TLA) system to be used in large hospitals has been optimized by adopting the conveyer belt method for rapid inspect of a large number of samples. The conveyer belt system is difficult to setup in small or medium sized hospitals since the size of system is enormous, and large amount of investment is needed to introduce related facilities. Therefore, when This work was supported by “Development of Intelligent Robot Tech- nologies for Laboratory Medicine by Applying Biotechnology” under the Development of Next-Generation New Technology program (10024715- 2005-11) of the Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. H. R. Choi is with Professor of School of Mechanical Engi- neering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, The Republic of Korea. hrchoi@me.skku.ac.kr S. M. Ryew is with Director of KnR System Inc., Youngin, The Republic of Korea. smryew@knrsys.com M. C. Kim is with Director of Robotous Co, Seongnam, The Republic of Korea. mckim@robotous.com J. H. Kim is with Professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul, The Republic of Korea. jinhyun@snut.ac.kr W. H. Son is with Chief Researcher of Division of Applied Robot Tech- nology, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Cheonan, The Republic of Korea. shon@kitech.re.kr K. T. Ahn is with Researcher of Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics, Pohang, The Republic of Korea. termi@postech.ac.kr W. K. Chung is with Professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, The Republic of Korea. wkchung@postech.ac.kr small or medium sized hospitals carry out clinical tests, they should process manual operation, or send the samples to dedicated facilities for testing. In order to realize the ordered medical diagnosis for patients, the new concept of clinical laboratory system is required to support high flexibility and personalization. The robotic technology for clinical testing related to miniaturization, modularization and intelligence can be proposed to the collective and distributed approaches using small mobile robots [1]- [6]. Up to now, many researches on analytical techniques or innovative analytical devices have been reported [1]- [21]. Also, personalized clinical test with modular robotic automation appears to be attractive as an alternative to the TLA system [7]. Robotic automation is defined as a dedicated robotic system capable of performing selective laboratory tasks. In general, robotic automation is flexible and requires less footprint and financial investment than the TLA system. Shortcoming of throughput compared to TLA is compensated with flexibility of operation under minimum overhead. Robotic automation systems designed for selective analytical tasks may better meet the needs of small- or medium-sized laboratories because these systems can either operate stand alone, or integrated to form work cells [8]- [11]. Also, the robotic system can be customized or personalized based on the needs and budget of individual laboratory [12]- [14]. Fig. 1. Concept of BioRobot platform using new transfer system called Mobile Agent In this paper, the flexible laboratory automation using small mobile robots is proposed that can be used as various analyses for laboratory automation, including immunoassay analysis, serological tests, chemistry tests, peripheral blood 4th IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering Key Bridge Marriott, Washington DC, USA August 23-26, 2008 978-1-4244-2023-0/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE. 918 Authorized licensed use limited to: IEEE Xplore. Downloaded on February 10, 2009 at 21:01 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.