Labscape Goal: Simplify lab work by making information available - PDF document

Labscape • Goal: Simplify lab work by making information available where it is needed and by collecting and organizing data when it is created into a formal representation that others understand and process Sub problems • Where/When should information be available? • Where/when information is created? • Need of formal representation • Collaborative work 1

Characteristics • Instrumentation – Materials (cells, tubes, other disposable materials) come and go. – Large number of heterogeneous devices, traditional computers. – Large scale environment – Labscape should be compatible with other similar type of labs. • Cognitive overhead – Error correction and detection should be avoided. – Lab workers do not desire additional responsibility to work in an instrumented environment. – Ambiguous interface is not desirable. 2

• Collaborative work – More than one person work on the same protocol at the same time. – Who’s going to work on what can only be completely determined while they perform an experiment. • Challenges in recognizing progress of experiment. – It requires high precision technology to detect which sample in a batch a user is working on. – Samples involved in different steps looks identical. – Repetition of the similar operations challenges distinguishing the state of each sample. 3

• Dynamic work flow – Constraining users is not recommended. - They tend to reorder / add/ delete steps. Experience • UI precedes AI • Abstract operations and formal representation. • Remaining problems. – Integrating recognition technology. – Integrating sensors to current environment. 4

Discussion Recognition rich environment? • Predict user’s location. • Associate a user with steps. – (user, device, step) – Touching/ Vision – Number of pipette tips thrown away • Disambiguate state of each samples. • Tracking materials Combine Combine input: X (dispensed material) input: X (dispensed material) Y (base material) output: combined material Z output:combined material Z Get the container W Z:Dispense X to Y Open the lid of W Close the lid of W Throw away pipette tips Z:Dispense X to W Throw away pipette tips 5

Dispense input: X output: aspirated material W adjust pipepetter Open the lid of X volume Z Get the pipette tips W:aspirate from X with volume Z Close the lid of X 6