Robot Scientist

OwnerRoss KingEstablished2004FundingEPSRC
BBSRC^[1][3][4]

Robot Scientist (also known as Adam^[5]) 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, Emma Byrne and Steve Oliver.^{[2][6][7][8][9][10]}

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.^[11][12] 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^{[10][13][14][15][16]}

While researching yeast-based functional genomics, Adam became the first machine in history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of its human creators.^[5][17][18]

Adam and Eve

Adam's research studied baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)^[2] and is one of two robot scientists along with "Eve"^[13][19] (named after Adam and Eve), a robot currently doing research on drug screening.^{[20][21][22][23][24]}

Eve has been used for semi-automated testing for reproducibility of experimental cancer research.^[25][26]

References

See also

• Graffiti (program)