Collaborative Robotics for Analytical Labs

RedShift developed a new automated system which combines collaborative robotics to technologic equipments and instruments already present in your analytical laboratory.

During last years, industrial robotics has been rethought under a new point of view: it becomes collaborative and accessible to niche sectors and to the analytical laboratories. Collaborative robotic arms can work together with the operator in a safely manner. If it is touched, hurt or accidentally involved in a human operation it immediately stops, then the entire system can be easily restored.

Lightweight and small dimensions combined with the ease of use and set up, it is possible to even automate the most complex repetitive processes, increasing the quality and repeatability of the results, the yield performance and the working flexibility.

RedShift designed this system in strong collaboration with an environmental agency,

• to reach the homogeneity and higher stability for the implementation of the European Directives on air quality monitoring (ref. UNI EN 12341:2014),
• to manage reliable and repeatable data to be compared on national and international scale,
• and to break down the filter sampling process and duration in complete autonomy.

Indeed, air quality monitoring and related policies are increased to create actions and cooperation beyond national and international levels. The main concerns are for adverse effects on human health and the environment related to high concentration of pollutants and harmful substances emitted by human activities and natural resources (eg.: particulate, ground-level ozone, sulphur dioxide, VOCs, carbon monoxide, methane, toxic metals, etc).

Outdoor pollution can be transported over long distances and can affect very large areas interacting with the atmosphere (eutrophication, acidification and serious damage to vegetation and agriculture), for these reasons RedShift developed an automated robot arms integrated in a closed hood to check and weight filters for air monitoring.

A technology concentrate inside a highly innovative device, for all those processes which require precision, flexibility, speed and time optimization.

How it works?

1. Robot arm collects a filter-holder from the rack (numbered position)
2. It takes the filter-holder to a base with a pickup tower.
3. Barcode is read and registered into a database.
4. Filter is collected, and the robotic arm transfers it to the weight scale (during all these movements a deioniser is activated).
5. Weight scale performs the following routine: tare, first filter weighing, tare, second filter weighing (eventually a third weighing). All data are sent to a database and verified with a delta value set by the operator.