3D PRINTER PICKS AND PLACES CRITTERS
An adaptive 3D-printing system pinpoints the location of randomly placed organisms and safely relocates them for research applications.
Written by Nancy Kristof
SINCE ALL ITS MAJOR ORGAN SYSTEMS develop and start to function within five days, the zebrafish embryo is ideal for many kinds of research, but that also means there is no time to waste chasing them down for processing. The tracking, collection, and movement of living organisms for research has typically relied on humans, who can be inconsistent and unpredictable. They also need training, and these factors can add up exponentially when processing large numbers of organisms.
But a first-of-its-kind adaptive 3D printing system could come to the rescue, with research showing the efficiencies at which it can automatically collect and move living organisms to a targeted space without negatively impacting survival rates.
“The printing platform is quite similar to how humans work,” said Guebum Han, first author of the research and a former University of Minnesota mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher. Han, now a structural analyst at Intel Corporation, and a team from the University of Minnesota Department of Mechanical Engineering spent four years on the adaptive 3D printing project, recently publishing the results in Advanced Science.
This patent-pending technology adds a vision system to conventional 3D printing systems to adapt to moving organisms, mimicking human brain-eye-hand coordination. The vision system continuously adapts to updated visual and spatial information, sending that data to the computer that guides the 3D printer.
“The 3D printer is like our hands. The vision system, combined with the computer algorithms, is acting like the eyes and brain,” Han said. Like a human, the system can see, process, and judge information, and then tell the printer to take certain actions using real-time visual feedback and supplied criteria.
Han was attracted to practical applications of this kind of research after seeing efficiency gaps in the handling of large amounts of zebrafish embryos. Leaning on his postdoctoral research on 3D printing technologies, he thought there might be a benefit to using that technology to automate the handling process for living organisms.
“Why should we only limit it to synthetic materials, like printing hydrogels or plastics? Our idea is the organism itself can be a device or material that we may want to manipulate,” Han said.
The results showed the capabilities of the automated, aspiration-based mechanism, including picking and placing a single static organism, multiple organisms in droplets, and a single moving organism.
The first-of-its-kind adaptive 3D printing system identifies the positions of randomly placed organisms and safely moves them to specific locations. Photo: McAlpine Research Group, University of Minnesota
“Why should we only limit it to synthetic materials, like printing hydrogels or plastics? Our idea is the organism itself can be a device or material that we may want to manipulate.”
Guebum Han, structural analyst, Intel Corporation
Guebum Han, first author of “3D Printed Organisms Enabled by Aspiration-Assisted Adaptive Strategies.” Photo: Guebum Han
“The 3D printer can adapt the environmental change, such as the randomly located embryos, or randomly moving organisms,” he added.
The team has demonstrated this capability with beetles. Upon meeting certain criteria, such as its speed, or the distance between consecutive vision detections, a beetle was picked up using a nozzle with appropriate vacuum pressure, then placed in a target space for further action. Practical applications included isolating and immobilizing the beetle with a 3D printed hydrogel material (which can be created in customizable shapes) and adding an electrode or LED to its back.
“We create the whole cycle, strategies for how we can track and pick at the right time, at the right condition, and place them in a determined location,” Han said.
He hopes this technology might lead to the introduction of organisms as a new domain and material set for 3D printing. “It opens up the door to integrate with existing material selections,” Han continued.
The use of autonomous biomanufacturing methods could help rapidly improve the pace of evaluation and assembly of living organisms for fields such as bioimaging, cybernetics, and cryopreservation.
“It shows the capability that we can handle moving organisms and place them in certain locations. And second, it shows that functional materials can be integrated with the organisms, such as custom shapes,” Han said of the paper’s key findings.
Looking ahead, Han hopes the next advancements will make the system more flexible and he is confident that it can be used in more complicated applications. A future use could include creating complex arrangements of organisms with superorganism hierarchies similar to those found in ant colonies or beehives.
One limitation from the research was that the vision system only recognized 2D planes, which works for a flat, transparent zebrafish or beetles, but an upgrade to a 3D vision system could provide even more flexibility for pick and place, Han noted.
“And if that's possible, maybe our 3D printer doesn't need to stay in our lab, but it can be connected to other robotic systems or anywhere it needed to be,” he said. This kind of use may also allow for the collection of organisms from areas that would otherwise be inaccessible.
“The challenging part is that I think we can bring this technology to another level by thinking about new applications. Maybe it doesn't exist yet. Maybe if we introduce this new technology, somebody will be inspired to pick up our technology and then apply it to their application,” Han said.
Nancy Kristof is a technology writer in Denver.
© 2025 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.