Digital transformation experienced in the lab

Smart solu­tions for the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry world will be the focus of ana­lyt­i­ca, the lead­ing trade fair for ana­lyt­ics, lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­nol­o­gy and biotech­nol­o­gy, which will open its doors at the Messe München exhi­bi­tion cen­ter from June 21 to 24, 2022. Elec­tron­ic lab jour­nals, auto­mat­ed high-through­put screen­ing and pipet­ting robots: the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry world has long since begun. “There is a clear desire in the lab­o­ra­to­ry sec­tor for more dig­i­tal sup­port and automa­tion,” knows Armin Wittmann, ana­lyt­i­ca project man­ag­er at Messe München. “ana­lyt­i­ca brings future tech­nolo­gies to life to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to Lab 4.0.”

Special show on digital transformation: experiencing the smart lab live

Accord­ing to a study by the Fraun­hofer Insti­tute for Man­u­fac­tur­ing Engi­neer­ing and Automa­tion IPA, which exam­ined the degree of dig­i­ti­za­tion in life sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries, it is pri­mar­i­ly a lack of accep­tance and will­ing­ness to change, as well as igno­rance about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of new tech­nolo­gies, that are cur­rent­ly hold­ing back lab­o­ra­to­ry dig­i­ti­za­tion. The ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial show Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion aims to break down such bar­ri­ers by giv­ing vis­i­tors a live demon­stra­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tive robots and oth­er technologies.

The very set­up of the ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial show is a high­light. It is based on the iHEX hon­ey­comb lab­o­ra­to­ry sys­tem designed by a team led by Dr. Felix Lenk, CEO of Smart­Lab Solu­tions GmbH and head of the Smart­Lab Sys­tems research group at Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. The inno­v­a­tive hexag­o­nal mod­ules are equipped with var­i­ous func­tions, can be flex­i­bly arranged and are linked elec­tri­cal­ly and via data con­nec­tions to form an over­all sys­tem accord­ing to the plug-and-play concept.

Helping robots

Col­lab­o­ra­tive robot arms are an essen­tial com­po­nent of the smart lab­o­ra­to­ry at the ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial show. They assist lab­o­ra­to­ry per­son­nel with sim­ple tasks such as insert­ing caps into a cen­trifuge or seal­ing sam­ple vials.

“The goal is to per­form more exper­i­ments or analy­ses with high­er qual­i­ty using few­er resources in the future.”

- Felix Lenk

Par­tic­i­pants include Met­tler Tole­do with mea­sur­ing and pre­ci­sion instru­ments, Düperthal with safe­ty cab­i­nets and stor­age sys­tems, and 2mag with stir­ring and heat­ing tech­nol­o­gy and Inte­gra Biosciences.

While walk­ing through the exhi­bi­tion halls, ana­lyt­i­ca vis­i­tors will prob­a­bly also meet Kevin, a mobile lab­o­ra­to­ry robot devel­oped by researchers from Fraun­hofer IPA. Equipped with a robot­ic arm, cam­era, image pro­cess­ing and learn­ing algo­rithm, Kevin can, for exam­ple, trans­port sam­ples from one instru­ment to the next or fetch reagents from stor­age. “Kevin aims to relieve lab­o­ra­to­ry staff, not replace them,” empha­sizes Matthias Fre­un­del, head of the Dig­i­tal Lab Ser­vices group at Fraun­hofer IPA. “It’s about reliev­ing high­ly skilled lab staff of sim­ple tasks so they have more time for val­ue-added activities.”

Uniform interfaces

Anoth­er chal­lenge in Lab 4.0: All devices must com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and exchange data. In addi­tion, they are con­nect­ed to the users’ mobile devices, and in some cas­es also to exter­nal IT offices. This vision can only be imple­ment­ed if all soft­ware and lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­nol­o­gy is net­work-com­pat­i­ble and all devices have a stan­dard­ized interface.

The OPC UA (Open Plat­form Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Uni­fied Archi­tec­ture) stan­dard estab­lished in indus­tri­al automa­tion is suit­able as a basis for net­work­ing in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, as the indus­try asso­ci­a­tion SPECTARIS will explain at the ana­lyt­i­ca Forum Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion. A SPECTARIS work­ing group is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing the Lab­o­ra­to­ry Agnos­tic Device Stan­dard, or LADS for short, which com­ple­ments OPC UA and makes it fit for the lab­o­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ment. The Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion spe­cial show will demon­strate how stan­dard­ized device com­mu­ni­ca­tion with OPC UA LADS makes seam­less order pro­cess­ing in rou­tine lab­o­ra­to­ries possible.

Advanced laboratory reality

Many lab­o­ra­to­ry activ­i­ties can­not be eas­i­ly auto­mat­ed because they are too com­plex or require vari­able action. Dig­i­tal sup­port would nev­er­the­less be help­ful here. That’s why the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Forum at ana­lyt­i­ca 2022 is also focus­ing on tech­nolo­gies that have hard­ly found their way into the lab­o­ra­to­ry world to date, such as voice con­trol of devices and vir­tu­al or aug­ment­ed real­i­ty instru­ments. Aug­ment­ed real­i­ty gog­gles, for exam­ple, could give lab­o­ra­to­ry staff instruc­tions on work process­es, auto­mat­i­cal­ly record the steps per­formed or dis­play warn­ings if sam­ple tubes are filled incorrectly.

Synergy effects for the Lab 4.0

Whether in research or rou­tine lab­o­ra­to­ries, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is open­ing up unimag­ined oppor­tu­ni­ties, but it is also pre­sent­ing the lab­o­ra­to­ry indus­try with an enor­mous chal­lenge that can only be mas­tered through close inter­ac­tion between equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers and soft­ware devel­op­ers, researchers and lab­o­ra­to­ry oper­a­tors. ana­lyt­i­ca, with its com­bi­na­tion of trade fair, ana­lyt­i­ca con­fer­ence and exten­sive sup­port­ing pro­gram, sees itself as a plat­form that brings all these play­ers togeth­er. This year, Messe München is offer­ing vis­i­tors to ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial added val­ue: their tick­et gives them free access to auto­mat­i­ca, the lead­ing trade fair for intel­li­gent automa­tion and robot­ics in pro­duc­tion, which is tak­ing place at the same time.