Summary + Context

During my Spring 2026 UROP at the MIT Raman Lab, I developed an automated polar gantry system to advance research in optogenetic biohybrid robotics. I engineered a custom 3D-printed mechanical setup for a 135mm petri dish and built an integrated electrical and firmware stack utilizing a Raspberry Pi and Arduino. To automate the light stimulation process, I implemented an OpenCV object detection pipeline that maps the robot's position to real-world coordinates and drives the system's stepper and servo motors. This work established a fully independent hardware and software proof-of-concept which will be used to precisely target and actuate specific limbs on the biohybrid robots.