The development journey of the automatic colony counter Iris

At AAA Lab Equipment, we are excited to share the impressive development journey of our latest innovation, Iris, our automatic colony counter. This journey began with a clear vision, addressing challenges in colony counting to build a reliable, faster, and automatic colony counter.

This ultimately resulted in our AI colony counter, Iris, meeting the highest standards of our valued customers.

The beginning

Our journey started in 2012 with Irina, a machine designed by us to automatically process Petri plates. This involves de-stacking petri plates, removing lids, reading barcodes, sliding them under the camera, retrieving them, placing back the lids, and restacking the plates. Back then, we used a colony counter from another manufacturer. While it was the best choice at the time, it turned out not to be the optimal solution for the results we aimed to achieve. We found ourselves stuck in a cycle of expectations and reality.

The introduction to AI: a new perspective for colony counters

Peter: "One day, I came across an article indicating that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was becoming accessible for small and medium-sized enterprises. After contacting the professor behind the article, we were referred to an educational institution in the Netherlands. Here, we began exploring the possibilities of AI for the laboratory industry, together with talented students and researchers. We started taking photos and applying AI, followed by intensive algorithm training and test runs. The experiment proved successful and opened new perspectives for our team."

Iris: the result of team effort

Armed with the gained knowledge and experience, our team set out to build and perfect Iris, a machine (or device) that not only would meet the expectations of our team, but one that exceeded those expectations. Upon completion, we presented our new colony counter, Iris, to our customers. We gave live demos, listened to feedback, and simultaneously introduced our customers to AI and our product.

Key features of Iris

There are several key features that make our automatic colony counter, Iris, very powerful:

Works with AI: Iris utilizes artificial intelligence for precise, reproducible, and traceable counts.

High accuracy: Achieves results that were previously unattainable.

Traceable and reproducible: Provides fully traceable and reproducible results.

Comparable results to a human: Even higher consistency and reliability than manual analyses.

Self-training: We designed and trained the AI network ourselves for optimal colony counting performance.

Get a (online) demonstration

At AAA Lab Equipment, we continue to innovate, driven by the passion to elevate laboratory technology to new heights. Discover more about Iris and experience the revolution in laboratory technology through a demonstration. Contact sales@aaalabequipment.eu for an appointment and explore the amazing capabilities of our AI colony counter, Iris!