Vision-Based Assembly of Capillary for Microfluidic Device

The application of plastic microfluidic chips can be extended with quartz capillaries connected at the end of their microchannels, e.g. UV absorption detection method can be carried out, which responds to almost 80% chemical compounds in detection. A vision-based experiment system for automatically assembling capillaries to plastic microfluidic chips was set up. UN-curing adhesive is used for the joining procedure. Visual feedback is implemented in the assembly system and the control algorithm is briefly introduced. The methods for obtaining the spatial position deviation between the capillary and the end of the chip´s micro channel are described. The deviation information in x-y plane is obtained by performing image processing and converting pixels into actual distance with calibrated data. Two methods for recovering vertical deviation information were explored, and both are feasible for application, one is the depth-in-focus, the other is with the use of microscopic stereovision