ChemRxiv

This review proposes the concept of a “frugal twin,” similar to a digital twin, but for physical ex-periments. Frugal twins range from simple toy examples to low-cost surrogates of high-cost research. For example, a color-mixing self-driving laboratory (SDL) is a low-cost version of a costly multi-step chemical discovery SDL. We need frugal twins because they provide hands-on experience, a test bed for software prototyping (e.g., optimization, data infrastructure), and a low barrier to entry for de-mocratizing SDLs. However, there is room for improvement. The true value of frugal twins can be realized in three core areas. Firstly, hardware and software modularity, secondly, purpose-built design (human-inspired vs. hardware-centric vs. human-in-the-loop), and thirdly state-of-the-art (SOTA) software (e.g., multi-fidelity optimization). We also describe the ethical benefits and risks that come with the democratization of science through frugal twins. In future work, we suggest ideas for new frugal twins, SDL educational course outcomes, and a classification scheme for autonomy levels.

For details:

Review of Low-cost Self-driving Laboratories: The “Frugal Twin” Concept

Stanley Loa a, Sterling G. Baird e,d Joshua Schrier j, Ben Blaiszik f,g Sergei V. Kalinin i, Helen Tran a,b,d, Taylor D. Sparks e,h, Alán Aspuru-Guzik a,b,c,d

a. Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto. 80 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3H6, Canada

b. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Toronto. 80 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3H6, Canada

c. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4, Canada

d. Acceleration Consortium, University of Toronto. 80 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3H6, Canada

e. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, USA

f. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

g. Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA

h. Chemistry Department, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L7 3NY U.K.

i. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37916 USA

 j. Department of Chemistry, Fordham University, The Bronx, New York 10458, USA

DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-6z9mq

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