AI Agents for Lab Work

 Can see this useful for other kinds of 'labs',  A lab is a business process with specific goals, and scientific constraints, like those we worked with.  Better, faster cheaper, compliantly.  Carefully trained.  

AI Agent Helps Identify Material Properties Faster,  By Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), April 27, 2021

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of Liverpool in the U.K., and the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany demonstrated that artificial intelligence (AI) can speed up X-ray diffraction data (XRD) analysis and improve accuracy in searches for new materials.

The researchers developed an AI agent, Crystallography Companion Agent (XCA), that collaborates with scientists when it comes to decision-making,  XCA can perform autonomous phase identifications from XRD data while it is measured and works with both organic and inorganic material systems.

The algorithm was trained using a large-scale simulation of physically correct X-ray diffraction data.

Ruhr's Lars Banko said the decision-making process "is simulated by an ensemble of neural networks, similar to a vote among experts. This is accomplished without manual, human-labelled data and is robust to many sources of experimental complexity."

Ruhr's Alfred Ludwig called the research "an important step in accelerating the discovery of new materials."

From Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany)

Testing Robotic Lab Assistants

Robotic Lab assistants are being tested broadly, here some initial results.

Robotic lab assistant is 1,000 times faster at conducting research
Working 22 hours a day, seven days a week, in the dark   By James Vincent

Researchers have developed what they say is a breakthrough robotic lab assistant, able to move around a laboratory and conduct scientific experiments just like a human.

The machine, designed by scientists from the UK’s University of Liverpool, is far from fully autonomous: it needs to be programmed with the location of lab equipment and can’t design its own experiments. But by working seven days a week, 22 hours a day (with two hours to recharge every night), it allows scientists to automate time-consuming and tedious research they wouldn’t otherwise tackle ...'

In a trial reported in Nature today,      (abstract) ...

Advances in Event-Based Cameras

This was brought to my attention based on a project we addressed some time ago, the term 'event based camera'  was brought up as a potential solution.  To address the significant monitoring of lab work.    Here advances in the idea are described.  I am passing this on directly to those that were involved in that work, it may be relevant.

Prophesee’s Event-Based Camera Reaches High Resolution
Embedded vision startup Prophesee teams with Sony to shrink its pixel size to less than 5 micrometers    In IEEE Spectrum  By Samuel K. Moore

There’s something inherently inefficient about the way video captures motion today. Cameras capture frame after frame at regular intervals, but most of the pixels in those frames don’t change from one to the other, and whatever is moving in those frames is only captured episodically.

Event-based cameras work differently; their pixels only react if they detect a change in the amount of light falling on them. They capture motion better than any other camera, while generating only a small amount of data and burning little power.

Paris-based startup Prophesee has been developing and selling event-based cameras since 2016, but the applications for their chips were limited. That’s because the circuitry surrounding the light-sensing element took up so much space that the imagers had a fairly low resolution. In a partnership announced this week at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Prophesee used Sony technology to put that circuitry on a separate chip that sits behind the pixels.
... " 

Faster Lab Results with Phone to Lab Chip Connect

Faster lab test results for infectious diseases.

UC Smartphone Lab Delivers Test Results in 'Spit' Second
University of Cincinnati
Michael Miller

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a portable lab device that plugs into a smartphone, connecting it to a doctor's office through a custom app. The device uses a specialized plastic lab chip to diagnose infectious diseases with only a single drop of blood or saliva. A patient simply places a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth, then plugs it into a slot for testing; the phone provides the power and test protocol for the lab chip. Said UC professor Chong Ahn, "The performance is comparable to laboratory tests. The cost is cheaper. And it's user-friendly."