Force sensing and manipulation strategy in robot-assisted microinjection on zebrafish embryos

Robot-assisted microinjection has attracted considerable attention from both engineering and biological communities, due to its advantages of high precision and throughput. This paper addresses two issues in the development of enable technologies for robot-assisted microinjection. One is the microforce measurement during the embryo-injection process. A new injection force-sensing scheme based on a simply supported beam structure is reported. The model combining mechanoelectrical transduction of the beam and the polyvinylidene fluoride sensing material is theoretically investigated. The other issue to be addressed is the manipulation strategy to mimic human-injection operation, which is based on force sensing and control techniques. A set of microinjection experiments on zebrafish embryos is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed robot-assisted manipulation methodology. Experimental results show that satisfied survival rate of the injected cells can be obtained, which is comparable to manual operation by human expert.