A Physical–Optical Coupled Framework for Target-Valid Autofocus in Robotic Cell Micromanipulation
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Robotic cell micromanipulation requires autofocus under a narrow microscopic view that is sensitive to target drift. Sharpness-based methods reduce autofocus to axial maximization of a focus measure, but the score is meaningful only when it is computed on target-relevant content. Once disturbance leaves the intended cell only partially or unstably represented within the focus-evaluation region of interest (ROI), sharpness maximization no longer defines target-valid autofocus. This paper presents a physical-optical coupled framework for target-valid autofocus and instantiates it in a microscopic robotic simulation environment. The framework couples robot motion, target disturbance, optical defocus, image formation, and camera observation for repeatable closed-loop evaluation. OS-Autofocus (observation-stabilized autofocus) learns image-based lateral-axial motion commands that stabilize the target observation while recovering focus. A target-valid VWD-Tenengrad reward credits sharpness improvement only while the intended cell remains inside the ROI, preventing off-target views from driving the policy. Ablations identify PPO as the best policy and a VWD-Tenengrad reward as the best focus measure, and static and moving-cell experiments show that OS-Autofocus improves target-valid autofocus over depth-fromfocus and visual-servoing-assisted baselines.
Language: English
Subfield: Media Technology
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7223046711