BioCoder #8

Chapter 4. Flexible Robotic Platforms That Allow Scientists to Remain Scientists

Raghu Machiraju

Biotechnology has not delivered on its promise of breakthrough discoveries of immense benefit to humankind. Laboratory automation that was meant to accelerate the pace of discovery is mostly inaccessible and unusable for most experimental biologists. Current solutions are expensive and only offer improvements in throughput of specific steps in a given experimental protocol.

In this article, we argue that progress in biotechnology will come from the use of open user interfaces and open-specification middleware to drive and operate flexible robotic platforms. Such middleware will accelerate and scale the plan-execute-analyze cycle of development in the biosciences. It will also allow one to integrate multiple kinds of robotic platforms, 3D printers, and sensors, and drive these systems through biologically meaningful user interfaces. Further, the availability of such middleware will provide reasonable-cost solutions rather than the current expensive offerings. Both tinkerers and mission-oriented researchers can then create or acquire affordable and custom robotic platforms and explore the marvels of all things biological or complete specific tasks, respectively. Most importantly, such platforms will allow scientists remain scientists and not computer technicians.

In this article, we first describe the state of affairs in biotechnology and then discuss aBioBot’s solution, which provides ...