Robot science.(Science And Environment)

Ross King et al., "Functional Genomic Hypothesis Generation and Experimentation by a Robot Scientist," Nature, January 2004 (nature.org)

Robots and smart appliances already help scientists, engineers, and ordinary consumers do everything from make toast to assemble automobiles. Now they may actually do science. A team of researchers led by Ross King, a computer scientist at the University of Wales, has succeeded in building a computer-controlled system that appears capable of designing experiments and following a process of scientific reasoning without any direct human input. The system consists of computerized modules that do the robot's "thinking" and a liquid handling platform that conducts experiments. The computer system contains knowledge about biology, experimental procedure, and the yeast organism in general, but nothing about the specific outcomes it is supposed to achieve. The robot follows the same process employed by scientists: Use logical inferences to forma hypothesis, run experiments that attempt to disprove it, and formulate new hypotheses if the experiments falsify the existing hypothesis.

The robot performed large-scale experiments on the functions of genes on yeast organisms. (The organizers selected yeasts because their functions are already reasonably well understood.) In its mission to rediscover ...