The COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) global pandemic has upended the normal pace of society at multiple levels-from daily activities in personal and professional lives to the way the sciences operate. Many laboratories have reported shortage in vital supplies, change in standard operating protocols, suspension of operations because of social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines during the pandemic. This global crisis has opened opportunities to leverage internet of things, connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI) to build a connected laboratory automation platform. However, laboratory operations involve complex, multicomponent systems. It is unrealistic to completely automate the entire diversity of laboratories and processes. Recently, AI technology, particularly, game simulation has made significant strides in modeling and learning complex, multicomponent systems. Here, we present a cloud-based laboratory management and automation platform which combines multilayer information on a simulation-driven inference engine to plan and optimize laboratory operations under various constraints of COVID-19 and risk scenarios. The platform was used to assess the execution of two cell-based assays with distinct parameters in a real-life high-content screening laboratory scenario. The results show that the platform can provide a systematic framework for assessing laboratory operation scenarios under different conditions, quantifying tradeoffs, and determining the performance impact of specific resources or constraints, thereby enabling decision-making in a cost-effective manner. We envisage the laboratory management and automation platform to be further expanded by connecting it with sensors, robotic equipment, and other components of scientific operations to provide an integrated, end-to-end platform for scientific laboratory automation.

中文翻译：

---

人工智能驱动的实验室工作流程使社交距离时代的运作成为可能。


COVID-19（2019 年冠状病毒病）全球大流行在多个层面上颠覆了社会的正常节奏——从个人和职业生活的日常活动到科学运作的方式。许多实验室报告说，重要物资短缺、标准操作方案发生变化、由于社交距离和大流行期间的居家指导方针而暂停操作。这场全球危机为利用物联网、连接和人工智能 (AI) 构建互联实验室自动化平台提供了机会。然而，实验室操作涉及复杂的多组分系统。让实验室和流程的全部多样性完全自动化是不现实的。最近，人工智能技术，特别是游戏模拟在建模和学习复杂的多组件系统方面取得了重大进展。在这里，我们提出了一个基于云的实验室管理和自动化平台，该平台结合了模拟驱动推理引擎上的多层信息，以在 COVID-19 和风险场景的各种限制下规划和优化实验室操作。该平台用于评估在现实生活中的高内涵筛选实验室场景中具有不同参数的两种基于细胞的测定的执行情况。结果表明，该平台可以提供一个系统框架，用于评估不同条件下的实验室操作场景、量化权衡、确定特定资源或约束对性能的影响，从而以具有成本效益的方式做出决策。 我们设想通过将实验室管理和自动化平台与传感器、机器人设备和科学操作的其他组件连接起来，进一步扩展实验室管理和自动化平台，为科学实验室自动化提供集成的端到端平台。