Indicators for the use of robotic labs in basic biomedical research: a literature analysis

Robotic labs, in which experiments are carried out entirely by robots, have the potential to provide a reproducible and transparent foundation for performing basic biomedical laboratory experiments. In this article, we investigate whether these labs could be applicable in current experimental practice. We do this by text mining 1,628 papers for occurrences of methods that are supported by commercial robotic labs. Using two different concept recognition tools, we find that 86%-89% of the papers have at least one of these methods. This and our other results provide indications that robotic labs can serve as the foundation for performing many lab-based experiments.