WetRobo: A Reproducible Robot Kit for Coding Agents in Biological Laboratories

2026-09-16

AI Summary

为解决生物实验室自动化问题，研究者开发了WetRobo机器人套件，通过自然语言指令和编程代理适应不同实验室环境，无需特定训练数据或神经网络。

Abstract

Automating biological research requires general-purpose, reproducible robot systems that allow individual wet-lab researchers to delegate robot tasks without performing teleoperation or neural-network training. Vision-language-action policies have been proposed for general-purpose arms, but can lose performance when their operating environment changes. We therefore built WetRobo, a robot kit that can readily transfer between laboratories. It consists of one robot arm, laboratory equipment (an incubator, a reagent bottle with a cap, and a Petri dish), the existing code that moves the arm, teleoperation demonstrations of each task that we recorded, and a general AGENTS.md skill file. A biological experimentalist provides natural-language tasks without collecting local teleoperation training data or training a neural network. The coding agent observes the local laboratory and writes and executes programs, using external tools as needed for adaptation. We demonstrate use of WetRobo with OpenAI Codex (gpt-5.6-sol) on three successful tasks: lifting a Petri dish lid, removing a bottle cap, and opening the incubator door, all in real-world laboratories. The coding agent achieved the cap task in both laboratories, Lab X and Lab Y, whereas a VLA fine-tuned on Lab X demonstrations succeeded there but failed to transfer to Lab Y. These results point to a practical route for laboratory robotics: instead of training a policy for each laboratory, distribute a kit and let a coding agent adapt it in each laboratory. Code, demonstrations, and the evolved programs are available at https://github.com/tsudalab/WetRobo.

Problem

• biological laboratories
• reproducible robot systems
• teleoperation
• neural-network training
• environment changes

Innovation

• reproducible robot kit
• natural-language tasks
• coding agent
• laboratory adaptation
• no teleoperation or neural network training