BOTABOT
LAB
BOTABOT |
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When Artificial Intelligence encounters Microalgal research, through the shared ideas of Prof. Patrick E. Meyer (AI - bioinformatics) and FNRS Researcher Pierre Cardol (ERC-grant, microalgae), an open-hardware-bioautomation lab was born.
It has been created in 2018 at Uliege university under the name of BOTABOT Lab (i.e. short for botanical robots laboratory).
Realizing that experimental biology is in dire need of robots able to perform repetitive but non-trivial tasks, in a very reproducible manner and also at a reasonable cost, the two heads of labs (bioinformatics - microalgae) have decided to unite their research with 3D printing, singleboard computers and lots of sensors in order to develop inexpensive and open-hardware machines that can produce and analyze large amount of data, in an automated and innovative way. With these ideas in mind, Alain Gervasi is hired to develop the first prototype: a phototurbidostat that could learn by itself how to grow automatically any microalgae. The prototype becomes an immediate success and new machines are now under construction. Our plan is to share freely (on this website) using non-commercial licenses all the details of the construction so that anyone in the world can reproduce, share, use and improve our machines at production cost. We believe that open-hardware robots will change the way research in molecular biology is conducted in the very same way than open-software has done it before (i.e. bioinformatics). |
Dr. Pierre Cardol
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Alain Gervasi introduces (in French) his research in video |
Prof. Patrick E. Meyer
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