Goals

The main technical objective is to advance the development and validation of a laboratory prototype capable of fully automating heathspan assays with C. elegans, thereby increasing screening capacity through large-scale assays. The specific objectives are:

• To develop a new prototype, “Heathspan+”, with a configuration similar to the final version and to demonstrate its functionality at the laboratory level (TRL5). This prototype integrates all system components (including the CNNs and the automatic feeding system).

• To validate the “Heathspan+” prototype with a real application of fully automated C. elegans inspection based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in a simulated relevant environment (TRL6).