ABB Cobots and the Rise of Robot-Run Research Labs

MIT's robotic optics lab builds a laser on its own. See how ABB GoFa and YuMi cobots already work lab benches at XtalPi and with METTLER TOLEDO.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

Optics experiments used to be built entirely by hand. In 1966 NASA's Lewis Research Center ran a gas laser interferometer in its Electric Conversion Laboratory, with tubes and mirrors lined up on a bench. According to the MIT physicists behind this month's news, a manual optics setup can still take days or months to align.

Researcher leaning over a bench of glass laser tubes glowing red
Researcher leaning over a bench of glass laser tubes glowing red

A gas laser interferometer in NASA Lewis Research Center's Electric Conversion Laboratory, 1966. Photo: NASA Glenn Research Center (public domain)

Automation came in pieces. Motorized mounts turned the knobs, and in biology labs, robot arms began shuttling assay plates between readers and incubators. Someone still had to design each layout, place the parts and fix it when a bump knocked a beam out of line.

Close-up of a robot gripper holding a white assay plate
Close-up of a robot gripper holding a white assay plate

A robot arm moves an assay plate in a screening lab. Photo: NIAID (public domain)

On September 17, MIT described a robotic optics lab that handles that last part as well. A seven-joint arm picks QR-coded mirrors and lenses from random spots, places them and builds a working laser cavity, while Wi-Fi tuners make micron-scale corrections. The team presents the system at IROS this month.

Woman in laser safety glasses adjusting components on a crowded optics table with an orange beam
Woman in laser safety glasses adjusting components on a crowded optics table with an orange beam

A researcher adjusting mirrors and lenses on an optical table. Photo: U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB has been moving its cobots onto the same kind of bench. XtalPi, a Chinese AI drug and materials company, bought more than 100 GoFa cobots in 2022 for automated workstations in Shanghai. In 2023 the two companies agreed to build lab stations for synthesis, crystallization and testing.

Long clean lab hall lined with enclosed automated workstations
Long clean lab hall lined with enclosed automated workstations

Automated lab workstations at XtalPi, built with ABB GoFa cobots. Photo: ABB

ABB also connects GoFa to METTLER TOLEDO's LabX software, so the arm can run titrators and UV-Vis spectrophotometers, and at SLAS it has demonstrated GoFa cells pipetting, weighing and filtering samples. YuMi, ABB's small dual-arm robot, was tested loading centrifuges at the company's healthcare research hub in Houston.

Grey ABB GoFa robot arm beside laboratory instruments at a bench
Grey ABB GoFa robot arm beside laboratory instruments at a bench

An ABB GoFa cobot at a lab bench in ABB's healthcare research hub. Photo: ABB

MIT wants to put its lab in the cloud, so a scientist anywhere could send in an experiment and a robot would set it up overnight. If that works, a university or startup with a bench cobot like the ones ABB already sells could rent out lab time to people who never visit. I'd sign up for that.

Dual-arm ABB YuMi robot on a mobile base placing tubes into a centrifuge
Dual-arm ABB YuMi robot on a mobile base placing tubes into a centrifuge

ABB's mobile YuMi concept loading a centrifuge. Photo: ABB

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