ABSTRACT
The introduction of laboratory robotics in early 1982 by the Zymark Corporation, laboratory automation was thought to be limited to autosamplers for analytical instruments such as high-pressure liquid chromatography or gas chromatography, integration or data reduction units and laboratory information management systems. Since the laboratory robot is computer controlled and computer driven, then consideration must be given to the operation and programming of the unit. In many laboratories, one bottleneck to efficient operations was that a substantial amount of time was spent each day preparing samples for subsequent analysis during the night hours. The articulating units are small versions of industrial robots and do not seem designed for laboratory work. Each laboratory procedure, no matter how complex, can be broken down into a series of discrete laboratory unit operations, and these building blocks can therefore be integrated to allow the accomplishment of the overall analysis scheme.
