A Colony Picking Control System Based on Machine Vision

With rapid growth of the number of genomic sequences, researchers are faced with the task of managing huge clone libraries. A single experiment may involve classifying tens of thousands of bacterial, yeast or phage colonies. While, repetitive manual operation is followed by a lower efficiency and accuracy of colony picking and inoculating, leading to the fail in high throughput. In order to improve the efficiency and accuracy of colony picking process, this paper introduces a prototype, which picks colonies automatically. After analysis of colony picking process, we develop a colony picking control system based on industrial computer and CCD camera. Beyond that, we put forward the design of hardware and software of system. Finally, picking and inoculating colonies, as well as cleaning and heating needles come true.