Orientation control of biological cells has gained much attention recently due to the fact that cell rotation is both a basic and vital cell micromanipulation technique involved in many orientation-based cell surgery applications. These applications include cell injection, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), cell biopsy, cell nuclear transfer, etc.
This study is among the first to achieve automated cell out-of-plane orientation control by using robotically controlled optical tweezers. This enhancement increases biological cell processing capability and complexity, and fulfills the demand of multi-DOF cell orientation control. Experiments of automated out of image plane rotational control for cell nucleus extraction surgery are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. This approach advances robot-aided single cell manipulation and produces impactful benefits to cell surgery applications such as nucleus transplantation and organelle biopsy in precision medicine.