Exploring Ways to Ease Equipment Connectivity
During the last decade the expansion of high throughput biology and automated bioprocessing workflows has progressed by the advances in robotics, automation and sensor technology.
This article is posted on our Science Snippets Blog.
The diversification and specialization of laboratory equipment has grown dramatically. It is not uncommon for a research laboratory to have more than a dozen specialized analytical devices. The device functionality and complexity is continuously increasing. One such example is a bioreactor, which can be equipped with many different probes (e.g. Raman, ViaMass, photosensitive optical module) depending on the performed study. This diversity results in a complexity to integrate the sensor technologies and includes long setup times, which limits the overall productivity.
This negative impact and slowdown can be reduced by equipping each device with so-called Plug & Play (PnP) capabilities. In computerized systems, such as everyday home automation, PnP is a common concept. Each device or software component is able to discover other components without an explicit configuration including all device properties and capabilities (e.g. location, firmware version, last calibration). In an ideal research environment, the seamless integration and interoperability between analytical devices into a higher laboratory information management system (LIMS) or a manufacturing execution system (MES) should be an automatized process.
The biotech industry still relies on proprietary solutions that require a dedicated setup and configuration stage to integrate equipment. Sartorius Corporate Research is actively landscaping technologies for Plug and Play Connectivity for equipment automation and is evaluating promising candidates. One such candidate is provided by the Standardization in Laboratory Automation (SiLA) consortium, which is developing an open and no cost connectivity standard. This standard provides true Plug and Play capabilities, which include automatized device discovery and identification of device capabilities.
Based on early evaluations, Sartorius joined the SiLA consortia as a Core Member in November 2019 and a Corporate Research representative, Robert Söldner, was elected to join SiLAs Board of Directors to influence the future direction of this standardization effort.
As an initial proof of concept, Sartorius Corporate Research and Lab Products & Services Product Development jointly implemented a SiLA2 driver for a Sartorius Cubis II balance and several laboratory sensing satellites. These devices were integrated into a dedicated laboratory network. Further, they were incorporated into an overarching system, which allows the discovery, control and data collection of SiLA2 equipment and other services and components.
In the future, we plan to extend this prototype to allow the execution of laboratory workflows by using visual programming approaches (e.g. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) like the Camunda platform).
Concludingly, it can be highlighted that open standards are a key driver for innovation and automation. Sartorius is investigating these emerging standards to simplify the integration of our equipment and enable agile research.