Question: What do your robots do?????

Alexis Barr answered on 16 Jun 2013:

Our robot is very helpful. It’s not super sophisticated like some of the ones you see on TV – it’s really a robot arm. What it does is it picks up our 384-well plates in its grip, and then can move them around. So, for example, we might have 30 384-well plates on the stacker (the metal structure I am stood behind in the photo). The robot will take each of these plates in turn and then put them into our microscope. The microscope will then take photos of the cells in every well on the plate. When the microscope has finished, the robot will take that plate out of the robot and put the next plate in until it’s finished all the plates on the stacker. We all love our robot because if we didn’t have it, we would have to stand there all day taking plates in an out of the robot. Instead – we can go and do other experiments at the same time!