Sample-oriented automation concepts

However, automation systems that can handle the product and process diversity specially required by research laboratories on the basis of sample-oriented automation concepts (Fig. 19.1) - and with high productivity to boot - have recently begun to appear on the market. Equipment pertaining to laboratory automation may therefore, from the perspective of organization, break down into three kinds of systems decentralized, function-oriented, and sample-oriented. 

Figure 19.1. Classical function-oriented automation concept compared with central-automated sample-oriented systems.

The classical function-oriented automation concept forfeits efficiency the instant a diversity of process and products are targeted. On the other hand, by centralizing automation, i.e., by devolving automation tasks away from the periphery to a powerful central robot, highly variable processes can be tackled, e.g., in combinatorial synthesis. One feature of these so-called sample-oriented systems is that the pipetting function is centralized. 

Figure 19.5. In the course of developing the robotic platform ARCoSyn for fully automated synthesis and purification of compound arrays, a sample-oriented concept has been realized that subordinates sample functionality, thus avoiding complex transport processes between spatially separated individual functionalities. The central component is an industrial robot, which - in respect of flexibility (the gripper changing system for several centralized functions), work space (optimal utilization of available surface area, no need for a translation axis), precision, and loading capacity (option of using modules for both miniaturization and upscaling) - is adapted to the requirements of the laboratory automation concept.

What additionally typifies this concept is that it permits close networking between automated and manual utilization of resources - users and automation system can, as a rule, use the integrated laboratory gadgetry at one and the same time, which results in a highly open and flexible structural set-up. The individual functional networking for single samples or sample batches in a sample-oriented system with a view to combinatorial synthesis is shown in Figure 19.4. 

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