Campaign Design for Autonomous Experimentation in Materials Research

The current materials research process is slow and expensive; taking decades from invention to commercialization. The Air Force Research Laboratory pioneered ARES™, the first autonomous experimentation system for materials development. A rapidly growing number of researchers are now exploiting advances in artificial intelligence (AI), autonomy & robotics, along with modeling and simulation to create research robots capable of making research progress orders of magnitude faster than today. We will discuss concepts and advances in autonomous experimentation in general, and associated hardware, software and autonomous methods. <br/> <br/>Campaign design for autonomous experimentation or self-driving labs is complex and dependent on research objectives, experimental apparatus, analysis capabilities and decision strategies. Examples of autonomous experimentation campaigns to explore important aspects of campaign design will be given.