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Self-driving labs can perform experiments thousands of times faster than a human and they don’t need to sleep. That means more science in less time, but many questions remain, says Alex Wilkins
By Alex Wilkins
A-Lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California
Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
A COMMON experience for many PhD students working in labs – the glass beaker and fume cupboard kind – is to feel like a glorified robot. So much science, especially the testing of new materials that students are often left to carry out, can require repetitive drudgery that feels like a waste of time and talent.
Artificial intelligence and actual robots might seem like an obvious way to offload some of this menial work, but, for a long time, the complexity of even simple…
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