Berkeley Lab Researchers Developing AI-Guided Automated Lab

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are building an automated, artificial intelligence-guided, robot-operated laboratory to speed up materials science discoveries.

The laboratory, called the A-Lab, can process up to 100 times as many samples as humans can using AI. The facility can help scientists working on solar cells, fuel cells, thermoelectrics and other clean energy research fields identify new technologies such as batteries and energy storage systems.

Humans and AI systems will work together to identify new materials while robots would synthesize them, Berkeley Lab said.

Gerd Ceder, the principal investigator for the A-Lab, shared that the arrangement allows robots to correct themselves, speed up research and address climate-related problems.

Automation has been one of the key efforts across the U.S. federal government over the last year. In mid-March, Department of State Chief Information Officer Kelly Fletcher said robotic process automation improved internal processes, diplomat support, documents management and other back-office functions.

In April 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection planned to pilot an autonomous technology to improve citizenship verification processes at the National Vetting Center. Eric Sanders, the chief information security officer at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis, said automation should protect people’s personal information while improving vetting processes.