Artificial intelligence could assist chemists with disabilities

Abstract

Hoby Wedler remembers his years in graduate school as many computational chemists do: long hours writing code, running calculations, and poring over papers. Unlike many computational chemists, however, Wedler had a constant companion while he did those things—an assistant who could do things like describe figures in the article he was reading. Because Wedler is blind, he needed the support to complete his research. Over the past decade or so—at the same time Wedler was working on his PhD—chemists around the world have been thinking about ways they could take repetitive lab work out of scientists’ hands. These new tools include robots that can move around a lab and operate equipment as a human would, as well as automated systems contained entirely within a fume hood to mix reagents. While large-scale automation has been largely the domain of pharmaceutical companies, low-cost robotics and sensors, combined with more sophisticated artificial intelligence