A Lab Run By Robots: How Automation and AI Could Revolutionise Life Sciences

In labs across the world, talented scientists spend countless hours performing what is essentially unskilled labour. Much of the work done in the lab is tedious and repetitive, but a single error can potentially ruin an entire experiment. Automating these tasks not only frees up scientists to spend more time designing and interpreting experiments, but also greatly accelerates the the experimental procedures themselves.

Using AI and machine learning, it may eventually be possible to make robots that can analyse the results of an experiment, and use this information to design and execute the experiment that needs to be performed next. Such a development would revolutionise drug discovery, allowing robots to search for life-saving drugs with essentially no human input.