Benji Maruyama1
AFRL/RXA1
Autonomous Experimentation is changing the way we do research. We explore the role of human researchers and their partnership with Robot Researchers in the fast-growing area. From job security to job satisfaction to workforce development, there are significant questions and opportunities that arise from the autonomous experimentation movement. <br/>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 research 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 doing iterative experimentation orders of magnitude faster than today. Far from displacing human researchers, we expect Autonomous Experimentation to free human researchers to do the “fun,” creative & insightful part of research.<br/> <br/>In the future, we expect autonomous experimentation to revolutionize the research process, and propose a “Moore’s Law for the Speed of Research,” where the rate of advancement increases exponentially, and the cost of research drops exponentially. We also consider a renaissance in “Citizen Science” where access to online research robots makes science widely available.