Apparatus for automatically depositing, preserving and retrieving biological material specimens in a refrigerated storage

1. An apparatus for automatically depositing, preserving and retrieving biological material test tubes, comprising:

at least one rack configured to hold a plurality of test tubes, said rack including toothed guides on the bottom surface;

a refrigerated storage with movable horizontal shelves;

a conveyor interface configured to automatically transport single biological material test tubes;

a test tube handling device configured to handle a single test tube between the interface and the at least one rack, each rack being able to be placed on one of a plurality of lanes of a bench facing the conveyor interface, each horizontal shelf of said refrigerated storage having a number of lanes housing at least one rack corresponding to the number of lanes of the bench, each lane of the shelf being faced to a respective lane of the bench when the shelf is aligned with the bench;

a rack handling device including a motorized toothed translation track engaging said toothed guides of the at least one rack for moving the at least one rack between a lane of the bench and a corresponding faced lane of a shelf of the refrigerated storage aligned with the bench, said rack handling device being able to run parallel to the bench in order to reach every lane of the bench, said rack handling device comprises a proximity switch configured to be coupled with magnets of each lane of the bench to activate a circuit for releasing the corresponding racks in the lanes of the bench, said proximity switch also configured to activate a vertical and horizontal translation means of the motorized toothed translation track to begin transport of the rack by the rack handling device, and a reference photoelectric sensor configured to engage reference notches at each lane; and

a control unit configured to coordinate said test tube handling device and said rack handling device during the loading/unloading operations by means of locating means configured to locate each test tube in the refrigerated storage, by identifying the rack which contains it, the position of the test tube in the rack, the shelf and the lane of said shelf containing the rack, thus allowing the automatic retrieval of said test tube from the refrigerated storage from any point therein and at any time.

2. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said control unit configured to monitor the stay time of the test tubes in the refrigerated storage with respect to a reference period, rejecting the expired test tubes by means of the test tube handling device is configured to handle the test tubes between the at least one rack and an expired test tube collector.

3. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said refrigerated storage comprises two carrying structures having guides on which rollers hinged to lever mechanisms slide, which structures support said movable horizontal shelves and are hinged, in turn, to a chain actuated by a motorized toothed wheel.

4. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said refrigerated storage comprises a shelf counter including a pair of optical fibers which detect the passage of a tab placed on the external wall of the shelves, and an emitter-receiver pair configured to detect the presence of a rack during the handling between the refrigerated storage and the bench.

5. The apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said refrigerated storage comprises a sliding door controlled by the control unit.