PatcherBot system and operation. (a) Experimental setup: PatcherBot is built on a conventional Scientifica SliceScope electrophysiology system. Software performs unattended single-cell electrophysiology. Recording indicator lights up upon establishing a whole-cell configuration. (b) Simplified workflow of patch-clamp experiments. In manual experiments, only the electrophysiology (ephys) component is automated in some types of experiments. In the PatcherBot, a calibration state is added to enable unattended operation. See detailed block diagram (supplementary figure 2). (c) Comparison of approximate unattended operation time of the PatcherBot and conventional manual experiments as well as previous patch-clamp automation techniques. Recordings are assumed to be short (1 min) for all three modalities. Manual and previous automation timing information was taken from [21] (supplementary table 1). (d) Representative whole-cell recordings in brain slices obtained using the PatcherBot. Green neuron symbols represent successful whole-cell recordings; red symbols represent failed attempts. Cells are shown in a coordinate system that depicts their centroid location in the slice. The (0, 0, 0) point corresponds to the location where manual calibration was performed. Numbers represent order in which cells were chosen and patched (1, 2, 3, …). Cell 1 had low spike amplitude, likely due to an unhealthy cell or incomplete break-in.