Abstract

New Trends in Intelligent Robotics in the Laboratory: Towards Analytical Laboratory Robotics

Patrick Courtney, Leader, tec-connection

While robotics systems have been useful tools in the laboratory for many years, most notably in the area of liquid handling, many tasks are still little automated. At the same time a new wave of robotic devices is reaching the market - from robot lawn-mowers to driverless cars as well as smarter robots in manufacturing. These benefit from the latest advances in mechatronics, sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms. Many of these advances are taking place in Europe thanks to ambitious public funding programmes and a dynamic robotics research community. Since the role of the scientific laboratory is to obtain information and insight into the samples presented, analytical instruments lie at its heart. The robotics systems supporting these instruments could therefore be termed “analytical robotics”. This talks highlights some of the latest advances in robotics with the potential to take laboratory automation and the science it enables to the next level.