Integrating autonomy into automated research platforms
Name
d3dd00135k.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
581.56 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d1bcac10612192501486951ee8f0e2fa
Author(s)
Canty, Richard B
Koscher, Brent A
McDonald, Matthew A
Jensen, Klavs F
Date Issued
2023
Journal
Digital Discovery
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation
Canty, Richard B, Koscher, Brent A, McDonald, Matthew A and Jensen, Klavs F. 2023. "Integrating autonomy into automated research platforms." Digital Discovery, 2 (5).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Integrating automation and autonomy into self-driving laboratories promises more efficient and reproducible experimentation while freeing scientists to focus on intellectual challenges. In the rapid advances being made towards self-driving laboratories, automation and autonomy techniques are often convoluted due to similarities between them and ambiguous language, leaving the trade-offs between them overlooked. In this perspective, we address differences between making a process occur without human intervention (automation) and providing agency and flexibility in action (autonomy). We describe the challenges of autonomy in terms of (1) orchestration, how tasks are organized and coordinated; (2) facilitation, how devices are connected and brought under automated control; and (3) scripting languages, how workflows are encoded into digital representations. Autonomous systems require advanced control architectures to handle a reactive, evolving workflow, involving control abstractions and scheduling beyond what current automation approaches provide. The specification of an autonomous system requires goal-oriented commands and context awareness, whereas automation needs exact, unambiguous instructions for reproducibility and efficiency. We contend that this contrast in design creates a need for improved standards in automation and a set of guiding principles to facilitate the development of autonomy-enabling technologies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/D3DD00135K
