Scalable Low-Cost Laboratory Automation: A Digital Twin-Integrated Robotic Platform for Autonomous Liquid Handling (RAINBOTTM)
Researchers present RAINBOTTM, a low-cost liquid-handling robot built from a consumer 3D printer with a digital twin for remote supervision, costing under $1300, drastically lowering the barrier to lab automation.
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[Submitted on 22 Jul 2026]
Title:Scalable Low-Cost Laboratory Automation: A Digital Twin-Integrated Robotic Platform for Autonomous Liquid Handling (RAINBOTTM)
View a PDF of the paper titled Scalable Low-Cost Laboratory Automation: A Digital Twin-Integrated Robotic Platform for Autonomous Liquid Handling (RAINBOTTM), by Mohamed Rami Ayeche and 4 other authors
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Abstract:Laboratory automation accelerates discovery, yet its adoption is constrained by the high cost, proprietary design, and limited remote supervisability of commercial liquid-handling systems. This work presents RAINBOT\textsuperscript{TM}, a low-cost, openly reproducible liquid-handling robot built by converting a consumer-grade Cartesian 3D printer (Elegoo Neptune 4 Max). The printer extruder is replaced by a precision single-channel pipette actuated through the printer's own G-code-driven X--Y--Z gantry, with plunger and tip-eject motions effected by two compact linear actuators under Python control. To make experiments transparent and remotely supervisable, a browser-based digital twin is implemented to synchronise bidirectionally with the physical platform, mirroring kinematics and pipetting states in real time and exposing remote monitoring, intervention, and an emergency stop from any web browser. As a proof of concept, RAINBOT\textsuperscript{TM} performed sequential exchanges of differently coloured aqueous solutions while an integrated colour sensor quantified the resulting mixtures; measured red, yellow, and blue (RYB) responses agreed with expected mixing behaviour to within a mean absolute error of two percentage points, validating correct execution and real-time tracking. Closing the loop, the platform is coupled to the CEID\textsuperscript{TM} (Cooperative Explorer for Inverse Design) framework, which recasts experimentation from iterative manual guessing into a goal-directed inverse-design search while keeping a human in the loop. The complete hardware costs under US\$1300, which is roughly an order of magnitude below entry-level commercial handlers, thereby establishing an accessible physical--virtual framework for self-driving laboratory automation.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci)
Cite as: arXiv:2607.20662 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2607.20662v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.20662
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Fadwa El Mellouhi Dr. [view email] [v1] Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:47:32 UTC (11,545 KB)
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