Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

A workshop led by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) sketched a road map toward a longtime goal: development of autonomous, or self-driving, next-generation research laboratories.

Scientists have dreamed for generations of high-tech laboratories operated via robotics at the push of a button. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence bring those dreams closer to reality than ever before, said Rafael Ferreira da Silva, an ORNL Senior Research Scientist and lead author of the workshop’s report.

“These facilities will be the labs of the future,” Ferreira da Silva said. “Everyone in the world right now is talking about AI (artificial intelligence). Our idea was to look ahead and think about what these AI-based labs of the future should look like, what obstacles we’re likely to have to overcome to get there and how to keep humans in the loop to ensure we follow sound scientific and ethical principles.”

Researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University, and North Carolina State University also attended.

Key recommendations from the workshop included:

• Establish a national consortium to set standards and promote innovation;
• Develop software, hardware, and networking solutions and digital twins across autonomous laboratory domains;
• Design hybrid AI systems to integrate data-driven learning with scientific principles;
• Maintain human oversight of facilities and operations while bridging the time lag between human decisions and autonomous capabilities;
• Standardize interfaces with lab equipment and data management across institutions; and
• Integrate scientific education and workforce development with AI training.

The ideas align with the work of ORNL’s Interconnected Science Ecosystem initiative that seeks to connect world-class scientific instruments — such as ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, home to the world’s most intense neutron-scattering system — with robot-controlled laboratories and leadership-class computing resources such as Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, housed at ORNL’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

---