Robots as lab partners: chemists’ perspectives for informing the design of robot-assisted experimentation

Experimental laboratory work involves repetitive, labour-intensive manual procedures and strict safety protocols, making it an attractive area for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI). With research currently focused on technical innovation, there has been little work investigating the human factors of chemist-robot collaboration, and how these technologies will change the nature of work in chemistry. Understanding chemists’ requirements and perspectives is vital to the successful deployment and acceptance of RAI in laboratories. We examined the potential for robot-assisted chemistry experimentation through the perspective of future users by conducting contextual inquiries and semi-structured interviews with nine experimental chemists at various career levels with and without laboratory automation experience. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to gain a situated understanding of how their work could benefit from automation, as well as their perspectives and opinions on working alongside robots. We found that our participants are open to robot-assisted experimentation and have clear ideas for human-robot partnerships in the lab. We identified eight themes characterising chemists’ desired applications, the implementation requirements, and the perspectives on the adoption of robot-assisted experimentation. These findings show that successful acceptance of robot-assisted experimentation depends not only on technical innovation, but also on addressing the practical barriers and concerns of the chemists who will work alongside these systems. The key concern being that RAI should not constrain, but rather complement the role of the chemist in knowledge discovery. The findings contribute to a set of initial design considerations covering hardware, software, and interaction design for successful integration of RAI in experimental laboratory work.