Formal verification of robotic cell injection systems

Abstract Cell injection is a technique used for delivering substances into a cell and is widely adopted in gene injection, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in vitro fertilization, drug development, and various other areas of cell biology. Robotic cell injection systems provide the automation of this process and are capable of replacing the manual cell injection process in these applications. Conventionally, these systems are analyzed using paper-and-pencil proof and computer-based simulation techniques. However, both these techniques are error-prone, that is, the paper-and-pencil proof method can be prone to human error and simulation cannot provide a complete analysis due to its sampling-based nature and the inability to capture continuous behaviors in computer-based models. Recently, formal methods, including model checking and theorem proving, have been used for formally analyzing robotic cell injection systems to overcome the above-mentioned limitations of traditional techniques. This chapter presents these formal method-based analyses of the robotic cell injection systems. Moreover, it highlights their strength and weaknesses assisting a user for selecting the appropriate analysis method based on a particular scenario.