Harman Patil (Editor)

Robot Scientist

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Type of project
  
Scientific Research

Established
  
2004

Owner
  
Ross King

Funding
  
EPSRC BBSRC

Location
  
University of Manchester Aberystwyth University Imperial College London University of Cambridge Robert Gordon University

Robot Scientist (also known as Adam) is a laboratory robot created and developed by a group of scientists including Ross King, Kenneth Whelan, Ffion Jones, Philip Reiser, Christopher Bryant, Stephen Muggleton, Douglas Kell and Steve Oliver.

Contents

Prototype

As a prototype for a "robot scientist", Adam is able to perform independent experiments to test hypotheses and interpret findings without human guidance, removing some of the drudgery of laboratory experimentation. Adam is capable of:

  • hypothesizing to explain observations
  • devising experiments to test these hypotheses
  • physically running the experiments using laboratory robotics
  • interpreting the results from the experiments
  • repeating the cycle as required

    • While researching yeast-based functional genomics, Adam became the first machine in history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of its human creators.

    Adam and Eve

    Adam's research studied baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and is one of two robot scientists along with "Eve" (named after Adam and Eve), a robot currently doing research on drug screening.

    References

    Robot Scientist Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA