Towards Robot Scientists for autonomous scientific discovery
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 1 January 2010
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Automated Experimentation
- Vol. 2 (1), 1-11
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1759-4499-2-1
Abstract
We review the main components of autonomous scientific discovery, and how they lead to the concept of a Robot Scientist. This is a system which uses techniques from artificial intelligence to automate all aspects of the scientific discovery process: it generates hypotheses from a computer model of the domain, designs experiments to test these hypotheses, runs the physical experiments using robotic systems, analyses and interprets the resulting data, and repeats the cycle. We describe our two prototype Robot Scientists: Adam and Eve. Adam has recently proven the potential of such systems by identifying twelve genes responsible for catalysing specific reactions in the metabolic pathways of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae . This work has been formally recorded in great detail using logic. We argue that the reporting of science needs to become fully formalised and that Robot Scientists can help achieve this. This will make scientific information more reproducible and reusable, and promote the integration of computers in scientific reasoning. We believe the greater automation of both the physical and intellectual aspects of scientific investigations to be essential to the future of science. Greater automation improves the accuracy and reliability of experiments, increases the pace of discovery and, in common with conventional laboratory automation, removes tedious and repetitive tasks from the human scientist.Keywords
This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Automation of ScienceScience, 2009
- Distilling Free-Form Natural Laws from Experimental DataScience, 2009
- The EXACT description of biomedical protocolsBioinformatics, 2008
- Using a logical model to predict the growth of yeastBMC Bioinformatics, 2008
- A survey of orphan enzyme activitiesBMC Bioinformatics, 2007
- An ontology for a Robot ScientistBioinformatics, 2006
- An ontology of scientific experimentsJournal of The Royal Society Interface, 2006
- A two-way street to science's futureNature, 2006
- Functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation by a robot scientistNature, 2004
- Yeast cAMP-dependent protein kinase regulatory subunit mutations display a variety of phenotypes.1990