This article presents the design and development of a new hands-free ultrasonication robot for filamentous fungi homogenization. The platform was constructed with a modified inexpensive 3D printer, equipped with an upward-facing camera, a custom-designed wash station, and an add-on sonicator. While machine vision accomplished sample well screening based on image subtraction and color thresholding, it also determined the level of fungi homogeneity using color variance. Model fitting reveals that the process of filamentous fungi homogenization using ultrasonication included a period of significant exponential decay. Therefore, this procedure allowed for the rapid homogenization of the fungal samples during the initial stages of ultrasonication treatment followed by a deceleration in homogenization. Furthermore, a factorial experiment showed that higher sonicator power and temperature accelerated the homogenization process, while the cultivation time exhibited no effect on homogenization. In addition, the model parameters were varied between the wells, even when subjected to the same settings, meaning that the system cannot use the same asymptote of the homogeneity level to establish the termination time for different wells. Therefore, we used the standard deviation of the four most recent homogeneity level values to determine the termination time. This method was used for feedback control, forming a fully automated robot that did not require manual intervention during the experiment. A validation test on filamentous fungi demonstrated that the system was able to provide target quality of samples efficiently.

中文翻译：

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用于丝状真菌均质化的实验室内置全自动超声波机器人。

本文介绍了用于丝状真菌均质化的新型免提超声波机器人的设计和开发。该平台由一台经过改进的廉价3D打印机构成，该打印机配有朝上的摄像头，定制设计的清洗台和附加的超声波仪。机器视觉基于图像减法和颜色阈值技术完成了样品孔筛选，同时还使用颜色差异确定了真菌同质性水平。模型拟合表明，使用超声波进行丝状真菌均质化的过程包括一个明显的指数衰减期。因此，该程序允许在超声处理的初始阶段中真菌样品的快速均质化，随后是均质化的减速。此外，析因实验表明，较高的超声仪功率和温度可加速均质化过程，而培养时间对均质化无影响。此外，即使在相同的设置下，各孔之间的模型参数也有所不同，这意味着系统无法使用同质性水平的渐近线来确定不同孔的终止时间。因此，我们使用四个最近的同质性水平值的标准偏差来确定终止时间。该方法用于反馈控制，从而形成了在实验过程中不需要人工干预的全自动机器人。对丝状真菌的验证测试表明，该系统能够有效提供样品的目标质量。