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Design and Experiments with a Robot-Driven Underwater Holographic Microscope for Low-Cost In Situ Particle Measurements

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Abstract

Microscopic analysis of microparticles in situ in diverse water environments is necessary for monitoring water quality and localizing contamination sources. Conventional sensors such as optical microscopes and fluorometers often require complex sample preparation, are restricted to small sample volumes, and are unable to simultaneously capture all pertinent details of a sample such as particle size, shape, concentration, and three-dimensional motion. This paper proposes a novel and cost-effective robotic system for mobile microscopic analysis of particles in situ at various depths which are fully controlled by the robot system itself. A miniature underwater digital in-line holographic microscope (DIHM) performs high-resolution imaging of microparticles (e.g., algae cells, plastic debris, sediments) while movement allows measurement of particle distributions covering a large area of water.

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Code Availability

MATLAB implementation of the processing code is available at github.com/HongFFIL/rihvr-matlab.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jiaqi You, Anne Wilkinson, and Miki Hondzo for their knowledge of algae and assistance during deployments and David Brajkovic for work developing miniaturized holographic sensors. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation through grants #IIS-1427014, #CNS-1439728, #CNS-1531330, #CNS-1544887, and #CNS-1939033. USDA/NIFA has also supported this work through grant 2020-67021-30755.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation through grants #IIS-1427014, #CNS-1439728, #CNS-1531330, #CNS-1544887, and #CNS-1939033. United States Department of Agriculture/ National Institute of Food and Agriculture has also supported this work through grant 2020-67021-30755.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Kevin Mallery, Dario Canelon & Jiarong Hong

  2. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos

Authors
  1. Kevin Mallery
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  2. Dario Canelon
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  3. Jiarong Hong
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  4. Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Kevin Mallery, and Dario Canelon. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kevin Mallery and Dario Canelon and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos.

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Mallery, K., Canelon, D., Hong, J. et al. Design and Experiments with a Robot-Driven Underwater Holographic Microscope for Low-Cost In Situ Particle Measurements. J Intell Robot Syst 102, 32 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-021-01404-3

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