Hardware Flexibility of Laboratory Automation Systems: Analysis and New Flexible Automation Architectures

Abstract

Development of flexible laboratory automation systems has attracted tremendous attention in recent years as biotechnology scientists perform diverse types of protocols and tend to continuously modify them as part of their research. This paper is a system level study of hardware flexibility of laboratory automation architectures for high-throughput automation of various sample preparation protocols. Hardware flexibility (system components’ adaptability to protocol variations) of automation systems is addressed through the introduction of three main parametric flexibility measures: functional, structural, and throughput. A new quantitative measurement method for these parameters in the realm of the Axiomatic Theory is introduced in this paper. The method relies on defining probability of success functions for flexibility parameters and calculating their information contents. As flexibility information content decreases, automation system flexibility increases. Using this method, hardware flexibility parameters of conventional automation architectures are evaluated. Based on the results of this analysis, two new laboratory automation architectures are proposed: (i) total modular— a laboratory automation system with modular arms, which improves structural and throughput flexibility measures of robotic-based laboratory automation systems; and (ii) distributed operation—in this approach, liquid handling and transportation end-effectors move on transportation rails; this improves functional flexibility measure of track-based automation systems. (JALA 2006;11:203–16)