D-Konstanz I As part of the TraceBot funding project, around 50 experts from research and industry came together to discuss current opportunities and challenges in laboratory automation. The event was hosted by the health network BioLAGO.
The Robotics-4-Labautomation Symposium offered a wide-ranging programme highlighting current topics related to robotics and laboratory automation in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. A wide variety of lectures addressed the topics of sterility in the laboratory as well as challenges and requirements when integrating a robot into a laboratory automation system. Other topics included object identification, robot sensors and AI interaction, and the digital twin.
The participants took the opportunity to network and exchange ideas with scientists and industry representatives from all over Europe.
Focus: Qualification and validation in sterile environment
In addition, aspects of quality management and validation of robotic systems were addressed from different angles during the event. First up was keynote speaker Prof. Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding, acting director of ZEPAI (Center for Pandemic Vaccines and Therapeutics) and Department Head of Microbiology at the Paul Ehrlich Institute, who gave a presentation on regulatory considerations on automation from a pharmaceutical microbiology perspective. "It is important that stakeholders along the entire value chain of the healthcare industry exchange ideas to develop new robotic solutions in the laboratory. The Robotics-4-Labautomation Symposium made a nice contribution in this regard," said Prof. Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding, assessing the event.
Following the lecture by Prof. Isabelle Bekeredjian-Ding, a panel discussion took place in which users, developers, researchers and regulatory experts came together to discuss the integration possibilities of robots in the pharmaceutical industry and diagnostics from different perspectives.
Outlook: Trends of the future
The Symposium concluded with an outlook on the current top trends in laboratory automation and robotics. Young researchers spoke, for example, about advances in transparent object detection and pose estimation. Furthermore, it was presented how robots can be more widely accepted in Europe in the future.
"The first Robotics-4-Labautomation Symposium was a great success for the TraceBot project, because here we managed to bring together project partners with robotics experts from different disciplines and countries. This allows us to generate important added value for our funding project," concludes Dr Anthony Remazeilles from the Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation, who is the scientific and technical manager of the TraceBot project.
