Automation in the Life Science Research Laboratory

Abstract

Protocols in the academic life science laboratory are heavily reliant on the manual manipulation of tools, reagents and instruments by a host of research staff and students. In contrast to industrial and clinical laboratory environments, the usage of automation to augment or replace manual tasks is limited. Causes of this 'automation gap' are unique to academic research, with rigid short-term funding structures, high levels of protocol variability and a benevolent culture of investment in people over equipment. Automation, however, can bestow multiple benefits through improvements in reproducibility, researcher efficiency, clinical translation, and safety. Less immediately obvious are the accompanying limitations, including obsolescence and an inhibitory effect on the freedom to innovate. Growing the range of automation options suitable for research laboratories will require more flexible, modular and cheaper designs. Academic and commercial developers of automation will increasingly need to design with an environmental awareness and an understanding that large high-tech robotic solutions may not be appropriate for laboratories with constrained financial and spatial resources. To fully exploit the potential of laboratory automation, future generations of scientists will require both engineering and biology skills. Automation in the research laboratory is likely to be an increasingly critical component of future research programs and will continue the trend of combining engineering and science expertise together to answer novel research questions.

Keywords: automation design; environmental design; innovation inhibition; laboratory automation; life science research; reproducibility; research efficiency.

FIGURE 1

Prevalence of terms ‘automation’ or ‘automated’ and ‘robot’ or ‘robotic’ within the titles of PubMed articles per year over the period 1970–2019.

FIGURE 2

Benefits and limitations of research laboratory automation.

FIGURE 3

Top-down and bottom-up consumable adoption pressures. Top-down pressure occurs when an automation developer imposes a consumable on laboratories through tooling specific design. Bottom-up pressure acts in the reverse direction with laboratories and automation suppliers coalescing behind one consumable variant that then determines the design of automation equipment.

FIGURE 4

Comparison of available labour-saving automation options for the manual intensive processes of sewing and cell culture. Sewing has a range of interim automation options up to fully autonomous systems. Cell culture by contrast has only high-level automation equipment and no interim low-cost analogues to replace or augment manual labour.