Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) teamed with California-based Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL) to develop the world’s first academic cloud-enabled life sciences and chemistry laboratory on their Pittsburgh, PA campus. SF of existing warehouse space was converted into a research laboratory space. Within the facility, laboratory experiments are not executed by actual researchers in the room, but through datasets and scripts that are remotely input through a software application and performed by a combination of different robotic workcells with very little human interaction.
The facility included areas dedicated to more typical hands-on research in addition to the automated workcells. These spaces cover chemical and biological based research, and include fume hoods, biosafety cabinets, glove box isolators and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectrometer.
To support the robotic led research, a large inventory of common and not so common materials are required to be stored on site. These items are stored in bulk quantities within multiple vertical carousal storage units, several of which are refrigerated.
Robust communication systems were included within the laboratory spaces to accommodate the Internet traffic required to direct research and monitor results.