Automatic slide loader for visual microscopy application

Virtual microscopy is the system which gives the experince of examining the slide under the microscope virtually. To use virtual microscopy efficiently the slides must be taken from the slide cassette and placed under the stage of the microscope without any need of a user. Automatic slide loader must take the slide sensitively whose location was programmed previously and place it at its first location back after the images of the slide are captured. In this thesis the mechanical and electronic design of an automatic slide loader robotic system is performed and integrated. The proposed robot is in a framing of cylindrical-coordinate (RPP) whose first joint is pivoted and the second joint is prismatic and parallel to the first one and the third one is prismatic and parallel to the second one. In the first axis a worm gear system is preferred and in the two other axes the rotary motion is translated to the linear motion with ball screw system. As a control system widely and effectively used PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) control algorithm is used. By using TI F28335 microcontroller card the PID controller and the other related input and output signals are obtained. As the programming environment Matlab Simulink is preferred. After the gripper position of the mechanism is provided, the amount of movement and the inverse kinematic and gear equations are calculated. The response behaviour of the gripper to its desired position is also examined. The effects of PID coefficients are investigated and the related results are obtained. According to the comparison between the desired and measured positions the error is calculated less than 2%.