University of Toronto researchers have built robotic tweezers that can pick up and move individual cells without damaging them, guided by the tweezers’ sense of touch.

The grippers sense both their grip strength and when they touch a surface, allowing them to work reliably without human control when connected to a microscope and the right software.

The tweezers’ arms are about 3 millimeters long, with fine tips able to grasp cells just 10 microns across. In trials using pig heart cells, the pincer could pick up and move the cells without damaging them. Holding them with only 100 nanoNewtons of force, the gripper squashed the cells out of shape by only 15%. They can exert as little as 20 nanoNewtons of force.