Opentrons is using Nvidia’s Isaac and Cosmos artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to generate training data needed to develop and deploy physical AI-enabled laboratory robotics. The company’s goal is to help current and future customers of its systems use physical AI, to improve everyday laboratory workflows. Opentrons made the announcement last week ahead of this year’s international meeting of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening held in Boston from February 7–11. To date, Opentrons has installed more than 10,000 robotic systems in various research universities and biopharmaceutical companies and ships about 800 robots per year. That kind of volume has allowed the company to cultivate a wealth of experience with “’execut[ing]’ lab experiments at scale,” according to James Atwood, Opentrons CEO, and sheds light on what the company believes is the next phase in the evolution of lab automation. “True autonomous science is going to require addressing what I like to call the in-between steps,” he told GEN. That includes tasks such as moving samples from liquid handlers or fetching samples from storage or reagents from the shelf. “We have been supporting that in-between step for a few years now through some of our integration partners.” Traditionally, such integrations tend to provide a very structured platform for performing “that in-between [step]” where a “fixed system arm uses path planning to move [a sample] from field point A to point B,” Atwood explained. Integration with Nvidia builds on that functionality by making it possible to utilize vision language action models or…
