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

An apparatus for automatically depositing, preserving and retrieving biological material test tubes, comprising a refrigerated storage (1) with movable horizontal shelves (37) and a conveyor interface (4) adapted to automatically transport single biological material test tubes,

• characterized in that it comprises
• a device (3) adapted to handle single test tubes between the interface (4) and containers (5) of a plurality of test tubes, each container (5) being able to be placed on one of a plurality of lanes (11) of a bench (6) facing the conveyor interface (4),
• each horizontal shelf (37) of said refrigerated storage (1) having a number of lines (11) housing containers (5) corresponding to the number of lines of the bench (6), each line (11) of the shelf (37) being faced to a respective line (11) of the bench (6) when the shelf (37) is aligned with the bench (6),
• a handling device (7) including a motorized toothed translation track (18) engaging toothed guides (20) of the containers (5) for moving the containers (5) between a line (11) of the bench (6) and a corresponding faced line (11) of a shelf (37) of the storage (1) aligned with the bench (6),
• said handling device (7) being able to run parallel to the bench (6) in order to reach every line (11) of the bench (6), and
• a control unit (9) adapted to coordinate said devices (3, 7) during the loading/unloading operations by means of locating means (43, 31, 32, 56, 57, 58, 113, 114) adapted to locate each test tube in the storage (1), by identifying the container (5) which contains it, the position of the test tube in the container (5), the shelf (37) and the lane (11) of said shelf (37) containing the container (5), thus allowing the automatic retrieval of said test tube from the storage (1) from any point therein and at any time.