Lab Automation
staggering $12 billion by 202513. Much of this will be driven by service robot expansion, which are almost 100% collaborative.
Barclays Cobot forecast
5% of existing warehouses are automated10, there is a lot of penetration to come.
The CoLab Flex cart
The effects of collaborative robot technology can already be seen across many industries. Where in 2005, automotive OEM and component manu- facturing applications represented 69% of all industrial robot orders, by 2013 it had dropped to 56%, being replaced by a broader array of indus- try needs including medical robots, warehouse applications, etc11. These developments are not lost on investors – since 2014, disclosed private investment in robotics-related companies has soared from just over $500 million to more than $2.5 billion12. A recent Barclays study suggests that the collaborative robot market will grow from around $1 billion in annual revenue in 2017 to a
Collaborative robots in lab applications The impact of robots being able to work alongside humans in the lab as opposed to in monolithic and isolated dedicated lines is significant. To begin with, the overall footprint required for a system is now much smaller as guarding has been eliminated. As lab space is often a high-demand and low-availabil- ity resource, a cobot’s ability to reduce the overall space required to execute workflows is critical. Further, this space reduction is not incremental. Where 10 years ago a typical compound manage- ment system with a central industrial robot might occupy 150-300 square feet of lab space, today it is possible to have a single 3’x4’ cart with a robot and all requisite devices that can do the same functions. This would simply not be possible in a circum- stance where the robot required guarding or was unable to work in close proximity to people. In addition to shrinking the requisite footprint for any given automation workflow, collaborative robots have also enabled movable solutions for researchers. The CoLab Flex cart is a good exam- ple of such a development. Today, we are able to place a dispenser, storage devices, readers, washers and other ancillary devices on a single moveable cart which can be docked to a larger automation system, or used as a stand-alone unit. Because the robot is collaborative and requires no guarding to separate it from human workers, the entire system can be wheeled to any location in a research facili- ty where it might be useful, making it a ‘mini lab- on-the-go’. This increases its overall potential util- isation as now it can be a resource shared across groups rather than a fixed resource in just one lab. Collaborative robots are also much more flexi- ble and easy to teach. Because the robot is designed to interact with people, teaching it something new is orders of magnitude simpler than it would be with a traditional industrial robot. A human can simply put the robot into ‘teach mode’, reach out and grab the arm, move it to a new position, press a button or a couple of key clicks and the robot has learned its new position. With a collaborative robotic system, a scientist can walk up to any step of the process for observation and adjustment without process impact. During longer workflows and routines it is common for a scientist to need to make small manual interventions, such as the addi- tion of reagents. In a collaborative system, nothing needs to stop while this happens and the access points for such manual steps are much simpler.
68 Drug Discovery World Fall 2017
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
