System to Track Samples in Liquid Nitrogen Environment

Today, there are primarily two ways to track samples in a liquid nitrogen freezer, manual methods and robotic systems. Manual tracking is by far the most common method today but it is prone to human error since samples can be misplaced, entries can be inaccurate, samples can be moved, removed, or added without accurately updating the database. Robotic freezers, on the other hand, keep accurate records but they (a) are very expensive, and (b) their capacity is significantly reduced due to the robotics. The goal of this SBIR fast-track proposal, is to develop a functional prototype of a system that will allow real-time box tracking in a liquid nitrogen freezer. It will perform inventories without even opening the freezer. It will guide the users to the desired sample boxes for retrieval and alert them to errors (and how to correct them) when they occur. When used with our liquid nitrogen temperature box mapper a cold chain of custody from multiple freezers down to individual sample vials can be maintained and documented. This system will afford many of the benefits of a robotic system at about 10% of the price and without sacrificing any freezer space at all. This system will capture the very large segment of the market between single freezers with handwritten notebooks and Excel spreadsheets on the one hand, and expensive robotic freezer systems on the other. New electronics that is compatible with the challenging liquid nitrogen environment and the associated low level software will need to be developed but other elements of the system such as the user interface can be adapted from BioTillion‘s existing products. To mitigate risk, we have already identified and tested individual electronics components that function at -196 °C. The goal of the Phase I will be to design, fabricate and test (a) prototypes of the electronic designs needed to read RFID box tags at -196 °C and (b) RFID tagged labels that can be read at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The goal of the Phase II will be to use the Phase I results to develop a fully functional prototype of our system that will operate in a liquid nitrogen freezer.