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arXiv Robotics — research abstracts· Tony Qin, Ziheng Wu, Maximilian Schommer, Roya Amini-Naieni, Aldair Gongora·· 2 days agoSignalEditorial score75

A Physical Testbed for Self-Driving Laboratories: Comparing Bayesian and Agentic Optimization in a Minimal Closed-Loop Color Formulation Task

A Physical Testbed for Self-Driving Laboratories: Comparing Bayesian and Agentic Optimization in a Minimal Closed-Loop Color Formulation Task

Summary

This work introduces a physical testbed combining commercial laboratory automation with AI-driven decision-making to enable continuous, closed-loop autonomous operation.

Editorial context

The authors present a physical testbed integrating off-the-shelf laboratory hardware with AI decision-making to perform autonomous closed-loop experiments, validating the platform over 24 cumulative hours on a color formulation task and comparing Bayesian optimization against an agentic approach.

Source: arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · Read original article ↗

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What the source reports

Publisher-reported claims, with original evidence. These results have not been independently verified by RoboSignal.

Environment
Controlled physical settingOpen source S3
Control
Reported autonomousOpen source S3

Reported numbers

  • iterations

    6

    Reported trials

    View original evidence
    target absorbance spectrum. The system completed six independent campaigns, each consisting of 48 closed-loop iterations over approximately four hours. In every campaign, the system autonomously selected, dispensed, and measured each mixture, with an AI-driven decision-making algorithm determining subsequent formulations without human intervention. Using this testbed, we compared the performance of two AI-driven dec
    Open source S4
  • iterations

    48

    Reported trials

    View original evidence
    target absorbance spectrum. The system completed six independent campaigns, each consisting of 48 closed-loop iterations over approximately four hours. In every campaign, the system autonomously selected, dispensed, and measured each mixture, with an AI-driven decision-making algorithm determining subsequent formulations without human intervention. Using this testbed, we compared the performance of two AI-driven dec
    Open source S4
  • elapsed_hours

    ≈4 hours

    View original evidence
    target absorbance spectrum. The system completed six independent campaigns, each consisting of 48 closed-loop iterations over approximately four hours. In every campaign, the system autonomously selected, dispensed, and measured each mixture, with an AI-driven decision-making algorithm determining subsequent formulations without human intervention. Using this testbed, we compared the performance of two AI-driven dec
    Open source S4
  • iterations

    48

    Reported trials

    View original evidence
    ision-making algorithms, traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) and an agentic approach, in selecting mixtures under a fixed total-volume constraint. The agentic optimizer matched target absorbance spectra using fewer iterations than BO, with reductions up to 52%, and converged on a solution for one target that BO failed to match within 48 iterations. These results demonstrate a reference physical platform for SDLs t
    Open source S5
  • paper: not_reported
Source excerpts and review record

Automatically extracted; no manual editorial approval recorded.

comparatively less developed. In this work, we develop a physical testbed that assembles and integrates commercially available laboratory automation instruments and demonstrate continuous, closed-loop, autonomous operation over 24 cumulative hours of unattended experimentation. We validate this platform on a minimal closed-loop discovery task in which the system autonomously formulates aqueous dye mixtures to match a

Open source S3

target absorbance spectrum. The system completed six independent campaigns, each consisting of 48 closed-loop iterations over approximately four hours. In every campaign, the system autonomously selected, dispensed, and measured each mixture, with an AI-driven decision-making algorithm determining subsequent formulations without human intervention. Using this testbed, we compared the performance of two AI-driven dec

Open source S4

ision-making algorithms, traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) and an agentic approach, in selecting mixtures under a fixed total-volume constraint. The agentic optimizer matched target absorbance spectra using fewer iterations than BO, with reductions up to 52%, and converged on a solution for one target that BO failed to match within 48 iterations. These results demonstrate a reference physical platform for SDLs t

Open source S5

Source:arXiv Robotics — research abstracts · arxiv.org

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